WATSON’S MAGAZINE

THE MAGAZINE WITH A PURPOSE BACK OF IT

THOMAS E. WATSON	Editor
JOHN DURHAM WATSON	Associate Editor
RICHARD DUFFY	Managing Editor
ARTHUR S. HOFFMAN	Assistant Editor
C. Q. DE FRANCE	Circulation Manager
TED FLAACKE	Advertising Manager

March, 1906

Editorials	Thomas E. Watson	[1-28]
Down in Georgia—Pinkerton’s Report to Ye Bankers—Wayland’s Mistake—Calhoun for Public Ownership—Judge Du Bose’s Letter and the Public Debt—Dr. Talmage in Russia—A Prophet Whose Voice Was Not Heeded—The Highest Office—Editorial Comment
Lookin’ T’wards Home	Helen Frances Huntington	[30]
Assessment Insurance	Michael Moroney	[37]
The People	John P. Sjolander	[41]
Back to Nature—Part the Way	Eugene Wood	[42]
The Philosophy of Money	J. B. Martin	[50]
The Little Path to Peace	Mary Small Wagner	[54]
The Captain, Davy, and General Kuropatkin	Robert Dunn	[55]
Where the Road Dips	Henry Fletcher Harris	[63]
Repeal the Land Laws	Hugh J. Hughes	[65]
The Triumph of Justice	Clarence S. Darrow	[69]
A Radical Corpuscle	Charles Fort	[73]
Election Reforms	J. C. Ruppenthal	[76]
Pierre, Sansculotte	La Salle Corbell Pickett	[86]
The New Party	C. Q. De France	[88]
The Municipal Boss	W. D. Wattles	[91]
The Silence of Johnny	Harriette M. Collins	[93]
Vanished Years	Helen A. Saxon	[95]
Letters from the People		[97]
Putterin’ Round	Cora A. Matson Dolson	[111]
Educational Department	Thomas E. Watson	[113]
In Passing	Lurana W. Sheldon	[122]
Home	Louise H. Miller	[123]
Books	Thomas E. Watson	[133]
The Say of Other Editors		[139]
His Grudge	Tom P. Morgan	[146]
News Record		[147]
Along the Firing Line	C. Q. De France	[156]
Chastened	Kate G. Laffitte	[160]

Application made for Entry as Second-Class Matter, February 17, 1906, at the Post Office at New York, N. Y., under the Act of Congress of March 3, 1879.

TERMS: $1.50 A YEAR; 15 CENTS A NUMBER

HONORABLE HOKE SMITH, OF GEORGIA.

Photo by Russell, Atlanta, Ga.

Watson’s Magazine

Vol. IV MARCH, 1906 No. 1

Editorials
BY THOMAS E. WATSON

Down in Georgia

CLARK HOWELL’S DEFENSE OF THE CORPORATIONS

A national magazine can do no better work than to take a hand in a local fight, when the issues involved are national.

As explained in previous articles, the state of Georgia has been completely conquered by a Wall Street combination. Morgan, Belmont and Ryan are our masters. They rule Georgia through the Democratic party just as they rule New Jersey through the Republican party, and New York through both the old parties.

In New York, the tools of this Wall Street combination are such men as Murphy, Pat McCarren, Judge Parker, and Bill Sheehan. In Georgia the tools are such men as Hamp McWhorter, Joe Terrell, Clark Howell.

These men call themselves Democrats, but they work for Morgan the Republican as earnestly as they work for Belmont the Democrat. The Wall Street Railroad Kings rule and rob our state, and they do it by means of the men who control the machinery of the Democratic party.

Hoke Smith is leading a great revolt against this Wall Street domination, and he is doing it superbly. He is going to win, because the people know he is right. He is going to win, because the people know that they are being foully mistreated by the railroads. He is going to win because the people can no longer be driven by the party lash. He is going to win because the people have at last determined to vote for what they want.

In the January number of this magazine, I specified the wrongs which the people of Georgia suffer at the hands of the railroads. Mr. Clark Howell, the Corporation Candidate for Governor, tried to answer me, and probably flatters himself that he did so.

Let us see.

I made the statement that the railroads had violated our Constitution by “a joint ownership of competing lines, thus establishing the monopoly which the Constitution forbids.”

That is a serious charge. If it be true that the railroads have trampled the Constitution under foot and established a monopoly in defiance of law, that fact alone should damn them. No man, no set of men, no corporation, no combination of corporations, should be allowed to make law for themselves in Georgia. We should compel all persons, natural and artificial, to respect and obey our laws.

Does Clark Howell deny the accusation brought by me against the railroads?

Does he deny that the Morgan-Ryan-Belmont interests work together in beautiful harmony in Georgia?

By no means. On the contrary, he parries the blow by saying that if any unlawful combination exists, Hoke Smith was the lawyer who represented the law-breakers in court.

That’s a pretty defense for the railroads, isn’t it?

According to that kind of logic we must not enforce the law against people who steal because Hoke Smith, as a lawyer, has actually defended thieves. Logic of that sort would compel me to antagonize the law against murder because as a lawyer, I defended dozens of men charged with that crime.

Hoke Smith’s position as a candidate for governor is one thing; his position as attorney in law cases is another; and there is no use trying to fool the people about it. If the railroads have made an illegal combination we must smash it, no matter who the lawyers were that represented the railroads at that time.

My editorial states that the railroads treated our Railroad Commission with contempt by refusing to obey its rules, its decisions, its orders.

As an example, I cited the case of the town of Flovilla, Georgia, where the railroads had for two years refused to provide the accommodations for passengers on their way to the Indian Spring.

Mr. Howell jumped on this statement with the triumphant crow of a bantam rooster.

He had caught me telling what was not true. No wonder the little rooster crowed. Not many men have upset statements made by me.

Like many another little rooster, Clark crowed too soon.

Listen:

Clark says: “The truth of the matter is, the Railroad Commission ordered the building of a new depot at Flovilla, and the records of the commission show that the order was complied with.”

If the records of the commission show that, Somebody has fooled the Commission cruelly, for there has been no new depot built at Flovilla!

Crow again, little rooster.

In 1904 the railroad made an addition to its freight room, at Flovilla, and stopped.

Hon. Pope Brown, Chairman of the Railroad Commission, had his talk with me after we came back from the New Orleans Cotton Convention. I think it was in the last week in January, 1905. It was not later than Feb., 1905. At that time the railroads had done nothing for the passengers at Flovilla. For a number of years the people of the community had been clamoring for decent accommodations without success. The Mayor had tried, and failed. The Railroad Commission had issued orders, and had been treated with contempt.

“Crow again, little rooster.”

Then what happened?

The thunder of the Anti-Corporation Campaign began to rumble. Hoke Smith’s stern voice began to be heard calling the Railroads to judgment. The Corporation law-breakers and Commission-Scorners began to tremble in their boots.

And in the Spring of 1905, after Brown’s talk with me, the railroad men got a move on and ran down to Flovilla, built a little shed for passengers near the old depot and put some water-closets in the old depot.

Crow again, little rooster.

EX-CHAIRMAN BROWN’S LETTER

Hawkinsville, Ga., Jan. 5, 1906.

Hon. Thomas E. Watson, Thomson, Ga.

Dear Tom—Yours of the 3rd inst., just received. I have been very busy of late winding up business of the old year and arranging for the new year. You know this is about the busiest time for the farmer. Therefore I have not read the papers closely and have not seen the denial of Mr. Howell concerning the improvements at Flovilla ordered some time ago by the Railroad Commission. I do not recall exactly what I said to you in regard to this matter, but I will give you the facts according to my best recollection:

While Judge Atkinson was Chairman, the Commission, on its own motion, seeing the necessity of improved facilities at Flovilla, ordered that a pavilion be built like the one at Warm Springs, if my memory serves me correctly; also that water-closets be put in, and other improvements be made in connection with the passenger station. It was a considerable length of time before any attention was paid to this order at all. After so long a time, and continual nagging on the part of the Commission, which no doubt the records will show, the railroad put up a little shed there, which is but a make-shift, and called it a pavilion. Upon one pretext and another they delayed putting in the closets, and if they have been put in at all I do not know it.

In speaking about this matter on one occasion to a representative of the Southern Railway, whom I happened to meet on the train, I suggested to him that these improvements ought to be made. His reply was, that the railroads did not feel disposed to do anything for Butts County for the reason that the juries were too ready to give verdicts against the railroads. My reply to him was, that if the railroads would do their duty by the people, the people would in turn be willing to do justice to the railroads.

Mr. Dozier, the Banker at Flovilla, and Mr. Duke, a lawyer representing the Southern Railway at Flovilla, and others there, will corroborate what I have said. In my report to the Railroad Commission about the condition of depots in the state I called attention to several instances where the railroads had refused to comply with the orders of the Railroad Commission, and there has never been any denial made by the railroad people.

At Pitts, Ga., there was a little pigeon house built and located, contrary to the orders of the Railroad Commission. The records of the Railroad Commission will show this to be a fact. Also it will be found by the records that while Judge Atkinson was Chairman an order was made requiring the roads to stop their passenger coaches at the station for the convenience of passengers, rather than to have them stop one hundred or two hundred feet away from the depots. This order has also been absolutely ignored by all the railroads that have come under my observation.

There has not been an order regulating freight rates issued by the Railroad Commission in some time, unless it was absolutely satisfactory to the railroads, where the railroads have complied with it.

Mr. Ed. Baxter, who is Chief Counsel, as I understand, for all the Southern Railways served notice upon the Railroad Commission in the City of Atlanta before the Federal Court in the following language as near as I can remember:

“Poor little rooster—crowed too quick.”

“The Railroad Commission may well understand that they have reached the length of their tether; henceforth we will put ourselves under the ægis of the Federal Courts.”

In other words, whenever the Georgia Railroad Commission, or any other State Commission, or Inter-State Commission, undertakes to put in a rate that is not satisfactory to the railroads, then they would appeal to the Federal Courts. Again, and in its last analysis, the meaning is plain enough to any man who wants to understand it, that the railroads have taken this position, as is evidenced by their opposition to the bill now before Congress and advocated by President Roosevelt:

“We propose to make rates without any interference from State or Federal authority; we propose to fight any law, or any authority to take this right away from us.”

And that, it seems to me, is the great issue overshadowing all other issues of the present time in this state and every other state in the Union, as to whether or not the railroads shall be allowed to make rates without any interference from any State or Federal authority. Whenever we give them that power they are absolutely masters of the situation, and they know it. They can bribe legislatures, judges and jurors, and levy tribute upon the people themselves to pay for this corruption.

Now, the circumstances leading up to our meeting with Mr. Ed. Baxter in the Federal Courts, are interesting and amusing. In a few days I will give you the details in another letter. I hope that I have not already trespassed upon your patience.

Hoping that you are entirely restored to health, with kind regards to each member of your family, and best wishes for yourself, I am

Your friend,

Pope Brown.

In the letter just quoted, Hon. Pope Brown repeats the statement that the railroads did treat with contempt the order of the Commission; and he relates a conversation he had with one of the representatives of the Southern Railroad, in which that official gave, as a reason for not making the required improvements at Flovilla, that the people of that county had given verdicts against the Railroad.

Yet the railroad candidate for Governor has deliberately tried to deceive the people of Georgia into believing that when the Railroad Commission ordered a new depot for Flovilla, the railroads promptly obeyed the order and built a new depot right away.

Poor little rooster—crowed too quick.

In my article, it was stated that the Flovilla case was but one out of many that could be mentioned. Since Clark Howell undertakes to prove to the people of Georgia that the railroads are good, law-abiding citizens, I will mention some other instances in which they violate the law every day of their lives, persistently, deliberately, insolently, contemptuously.

The law requires them to post bulletins of delayed trains at every station in advance of the delayed train, in order that passengers may be put upon notice. This law is of great consequence to the traveler. If the train is one, two, or three hours late, and the traveler can learn that fact upon his arrival at the depot, he can dispose of himself to the best advantage during the interval. But suppose the train is three hours late and the passenger does not know it? Suppose he asks the agent, and gets his head bit off with a sharp, curt, offensive, indefinite answer? He then hangs around in the waiting room; he is afraid to leave the depot for fear the train will come while he is away; yet he may have to sit there, anxious and suffering, for three mortal hours; when, if the bulletin had been posted, he could have escaped some of the inconveniences of the situation.

The law puts a penalty of twenty dollars upon the railroad for each violation of this rule; and there isn’t a day when hundreds of violations of it do not occur in Georgia. Not ten per cent of the agents of the railroads obey this law. Ninety per cent of them constantly violate it. Ask any drummer who travels through the state! Talk about obedience to the little one-hoss Railroad Commission? Why, here is a statute of the Code of Georgia, passed by the sovereign Legislature and signed by the Governor, and the railroads treat it as a dirty piece of waste paper.

In his letter, ex-Chairman Brown says that the railroads have never put into operation an order of the Commission as to freight rates, unless that order was absolutely satisfactory to themselves. He gives an instance, at Pitts, Georgia, where the railroads went directly to the contrary of the orders of the Commission. While Judge Atkinson was Chairman of the Commission, an order was passed requiring trains to quit stopping one or two hundred feet away from the depot, and to stop at the station, for the convenience of passengers.

Ex-Chairman Brown says that this order “has been absolutely ignored by all the roads that have come under my observation.”

In Chairman Brown’s official report, he calls attention to instance after instance where the railroads had ignored the rules, the decisions, the orders of the Commission.

I challenge Clark Howell to deny the truth of that report.

What Georgian doesn’t remember with indignant shame the threat of the Southern Railroad, voiced by its lawyer, Mr. Ed. Baxter, when he “served notice” on the Railroad Commission that the Railroads were tired of being pestered by our little one-hoss Commission?

Said Mr. Baxter: “The Railroad Commission may well understand that they have reached the length of their tether; henceforth we will put ourselves under the ægis of the Federal Court.”

That was nice, dutiful language, wasn’t it?

That sounds like obedience to the Railroad Commission, doesn’t it?

Here were these Wall Street law-breakers, who had for two years been defying the Commission on the Flovilla matter, who had ignored their rulings on the stoppage of passenger trains, who had continually refused to obey the law requiring them to post bulletins of delayed trains, who, at Pitts, had acted contrary to the orders of the Commission, and who had never accepted a freight rate decision which was not just what they wanted—and their lawyer had the insolence to serve notice on the Commission that if it bothered his Wall Street clients further, he would turn his back upon it and seek that unfailing haven of Corporate rascality, the Federal Courts!

Crow once more, little rooster!

“Some editors make editorial music that way.”

As to the illegal charges made by the roads, in the manner explained by me in the 3rd specification of my article, I stand my ground, and I say that the Supreme Court has never declared that such a discrimination against a town on the main line was legal. On the contrary, it was held to be illegal.

As to specification number 4, that the Corporations rob the people of the state by compelling them to pay dividends upon fictitious capitalization, who can deny it?

Every privately owned railroad in this state has had all the water poured into it that it would hold. The fixed charges are based upon this fraudulent capitalization. The people pay dividends upon it. The freight and passenger rates are kept up, and accommodations kept down, and labor squeezed, and safety appliances neglected, and bridges allowed to stand till they fall beneath a load of screaming, bleeding, dying passengers, because the Wall Street rascals who watered the stock demand dividends upon the millions which they created out of ink and paper.

Clark Howell dares to say that the Central is capitalized for less now than before the war.

For shame! For shame!

One must be awfully hard up for an office before he can bring himself to make a statement like that for a railroad.

The Capital stock of the Central was $7,500,000 before the war; and General Toombs declared that half of it was water. The Capital stock of the Central proper is perhaps 75,000 shares, as it was before the war. It may be even less. But that’s a matter of no consequence whatever.

The really important question is, How much capitalization does the Central carry upon which it has to pay revenue?

Everybody remembers how Pat Calhoun got control of the Central, and everybody knows how thick Clark Howell was with Pat. Wanted to put him in the Senate, you know.

Well, Pat and his Wall Street friends slapped a debt of sixteen million dollars on the Central during the gay time they had control of it.

Then the road was wrecked in the most approved Wall Street manner, and many a genuine widow and real orphan wept bitterly in their grief, for they had gone to bed in comfort and woke to poverty.

It was one of the nastiest, cruelest, completest pieces of Wall Street rascality that was ever worked upon an unsuspecting people, and Clark Howell could tell some queer things about it, if he would.

The Central fell into the Federal Courts, was put through the form of a sale, and that international scoundrel, J. Pierpont Morgan, appeared on the scene as “reorganizer.” When the Central had been properly Morganized, it was laden with fictitious capital to the tune of $55,000,000; and upon this fictitious capital the people of Georgia are made to pay revenue.

When Clark Howell stated that the Central was capitalized for less than before the war, he did not, perhaps, tell a falsehood in a strict technical sense; but, in the impression which he knew his language would make, and which he intended it to make, he was as far from the truth as when he pictured the railroads trotting down to Flovilla, promptly and dutifully to build that town a nice, new depot—“one of the most attractive and best equipped depots.”

As to the $10,000 campaign fund furnished by the railroads to elect Terrell, Mr. Howell says “it’s denied by everybody involved.” Ah, indeed? When did “everybody involved” deny it? Who are the “everybody involved”?

Will Joe Terrell go before a notary and make oath that the railroads did not contribute $10,000, or other large sum, to his campaign fund?

Joe may not be everybody “involved,” but he certainly is involved.

If he can make an affidavit of that sort, let him do it. His own honor and the honor of the state demand it. Let Joe swear it was not done, and I will publish his denial prominently in this magazine.

At the same time, however, I want him to explain to the people of Georgia why he, their Chief Magistrate, offered a seat on our Supreme Bench to that notorious railroad lobbyist and corruptionist, Hamp McWhorter. I would like to have this explanation attached as exhibit A, to the affidavit denying the railroad Campaign fund.

The other specifications in my article Mr. Howell meets with merely a general denial. Of course, there’s nothing to discuss where a general denial is made to a specific statement.

So far from the record of the Legislature showing that the railroads do not dominate it, those records prove that very thing.

Can you pass the Anti-Free Pass bill?

No. The railroads oppose it. It is the cheapest, most effective method of bribery, and they mean to keep it. They will keep it.

Can you pass a law compelling the railroads to equip all passenger stations with water-closets; and to keep the waiting rooms open at night?

No. It would cost too much. They couldn’t do that, and pay dividends on watered stock also.

If they had to spend money providing accommodations for passengers, such “lawyers” as Hamp McWhorter and Tom Felder might lose fat corporation fees.

No indeed; you couldn’t pass a bill requiring the railroads to treat our wives and daughters decently at the stations where they have to wait for trains. It would cost too much.

Yonder sits an elderly lady on a pile of cross-ties. She is sick. She has been brought to the station to take an early train to the city where a specialist can be consulted about her case. It is cold. A heavy fog almost as bad as a drizzle of rain, hangs in the air. The door of the waiting room is locked. There is no fire, no light, no shelter at the station. The aged woman sits upon the cross-ties awaiting the coming of the train—sick, cold and suffering.

Is that your mother, my son? No. But it might be. Just such a scene was witnessed by a friend of mine some weeks ago; and the railroad which treats its customers in that beastly manner is one of these same Wall Street gangs of thieves that rob the state of Georgia through the Hamp McWhorters, the Joe Terrells, the Clark Howells who pose as the Democratic Party.

Great God! Are the people never to wake up to the fact that the machinery of the Democratic Party in Georgia belongs to a lot of Wall Street rascals?

Don’t they know that the platform of the Democratic State Convention is never handed out till Hamp McWhorter marks it “O. K.”?

Don’t they know that the majority of the daily papers belong to the railroads and are controlled by the railroads?

The Hon. Clark Howell closes his feeble editorial by making a side-thrust at this Magazine as “a subsidiary company to Town Topics.”

As to that, the answer is swift and to the point.

I am this Magazine.

Not a line can go into it to which I object. Not a line can be kept out of it to which I put my approval. My contract gives the control of the Magazine to me completely. What more could anybody exact? That Town Topics owns a majority of the stock is true. But Town Topics has no more rights over the Magazine itself than the Atlanta Constitution has.

Tom Lawson, or H. H. Rogers, or Judge Parker, or W. J. Bryan might buy a majority of the stock. I could not prevent that. But nobody can interfere with my control of the Magazine.

I have no doubt that Mr. Clark Howell envies me my independence. It is extremely doubtful whether he can say for himself and his paper what I have said for myself and the magazine.

I shouldn’t wonder if he held his place upon the condition that his paper must be railroad. He wouldn’t dare to have an opinion unfavorable to railroad. When he sits down to write editorials, I compare him in my own mind to the little girl going to the piano to practice her music-lesson. She is a good little girl, and she follows the notes. She improvises no music. She puts out her trained fingers and she touches, one by one, with painful fidelity, the notes written down on the score. She couldn’t think of striking any note which was not written down on the score. Dear little thing!

Day after day, month after month, year after year, the trained fingers strike the notes indicated in the lesson. If by chance she hits a chord not on the book, there’s a rap and a sharp word of reproof from the authority which presides over the “practice.”

“What’s that?” comes the cry of the teacher or parent, and the little girl, frightened at the false note, hurriedly gets back to the written score.

Dear little thing. That’s the way to learn to play by note.

Some editors make editorial music that way, and the scores are written in Wall Street.

Pinkerton’s Report to Ye Bankers

Accordingly to the report made by the Pinkerton Detective Agency to the American Bankers’ Association, at its last meeting, there were arrested and prosecuted during the ten years preceding September, 1905, five hundred and fifty-four citizens who had committed crimes against these banks. Some of these erring citizens had committed forgery, others burglary, eleven were classified as robbers, and fourteen were called sneak thieves. These last named probably stole the cashier’s umbrella, or got away with the president’s gold-headed cane.

The Law came down, hard and heavy, upon the citizens who had sinned against the banks, and the transgressors were given sentences aggregating two thousand and one hundred years in prisons, chain-gangs and penitentiaries.

Think of it—2,100 years!

The sum total of the money which the banks lost by the operations of all these criminals, during the entire period of ten years, appears to have been less than one hundred thousand dollars.

Yet the law-breakers who caused the loss must vindicate the law by a penal servitude of more than two thousand years.

There’s Justice for you.

During that period of ten years how many banks have gone to smash? How many presidents and cashiers have looted the funds committed to their care?

How many millions of dollars have the common people lost by the rascality of dishonest bank officers? How many times have we seen frantic crowds of men and women gather about the door of some busted bank—men sick at heart because of sudden ruin, women screaming in terror because robbed of every dollar they had on earth?

Yet when an infamous scoundrel like John R. Walsh of Chicago converts to his use the millions of money held in his banks, Leslie Shaw, Secretary of the Treasury, hastens into print to say that it was all right; Mr. Walsh had done no more “than other bankers do.”

There was a Savings Bank in the holy town of Boston, Mass. It gave itself the comfortable name of the Provident Savings Bank. Trusting common people put $200,000 of their money into it. Thieves on the inside stole the money. At one swoop, this particular bank robbed the people of twice as much as the whole of rascaldom had got from the Associated banks in ten years!

Frank Bigelow robbed the First National Bank of Milwaukee, of $1,450,000.

He was President of the American Bankers’ Association.

He not only looted the bank, but falsified its books. He did not commit the crime upon impulse or sudden temptation. He did it deliberately, systematically, colluding with his cashier to plunder the fools who had trusted him.

The banker who stole $1,400,000; and a man who stole a turkey and a duck.

The Law went through the form of giving this million dollar thief a sentence of seven years. His penalty is a sham; his “punishment” a mockery. He will be “detained” in comfortable quarters a few months; his health will then “fail”; he will then be pardoned, and will be ready to steal trust funds again.

So it is all along the line.

Woe to the hungry tramp who steals bread to eat. Woe to the ragged woman who snatches food for her starving children.

Woe to the bad men who steal during ten years, one hundred thousand dollars from the Members of the American Bankers’ Association. These five or six hundred bad men will be sentenced, in the aggregate, to a penal servitude of over two thousand years.

But let the President of the Bankers’ Association steal one million and four hundred thousand dollars from the men and women who trusted him with their money, and the highly-connected thief gets off with a nominal punishment and a seven-year term which will never be enforced.

During the last twelve months, dishonest bank officers have stolen more than twelve million dollars from the depositors.

How many of these rascals have been tried and convicted?

Less than half a dozen.

Yes; Frank Bigelow, sometime President of the American Bankers’ Association, laid careful plans, in collusion with his cashier, and stole fourteen hundred thousand dollars of Trust funds.

Nominal sentence, seven years.

John Shannon, of Ohio, at about the same time, stole a turkey and a duck; and John Shannon is now serving out in the Ohio penitentiary a penal sentence of five years!

John Shannon, my jo, John!

Why didn’t you wear a silk hat, and steal a million dollars from the inside of a bank?

Wayland’s Mistake

One of the most interesting and powerful men of this generation is J. A. Wayland.

He is a pioneer Socialist.

He is a hard worker, a hard hitter, and a man who never quits.

For the last fifteen years he has been a wonder of the world, to me. Henry Gronlund was not more unselfish, John P. Altgeld was not more intense, and Arthur Brisbane is not more effectively equipped.

When I first knew of Wayland, he had come down to Tennessee to put his beautiful dream into operation. He had founded a Colony on the basis of Universal Brotherhood. He meant to demonstrate to mankind the ease with which we could make angels out of one another, if we would only set about it in the right way.

As I remember, the name of Wayland’s Happy Land was Ruskin—the name of an English dreamer who wrote many beautiful things and lived one of the saddest lives imaginable.

The vital spark in the Ruskin colony was Wayland’s paper. He called it “The Coming Nation.” The circulation of this paper grew to be enormous, and the soul of the paper was Wayland.

But some of the angels who had drifted into the colony became jealous of Wayland, and they made the point that the paper should not continue to be the property of Wayland—the man who had made it—but should become the common property of everybody who had drifted into the colony.

If my memory serves me right, Wayland yielded to his angel-brothers, and turned his magnificent property over to the Toms, Dicks, and Harrys who had come into Ruskin from the four corners and elsewhere.

After this, the angels found fault with Wayland about something else and then something else; and then some other thing: until the great-hearted, great-minded man threw up his hands in despair.

He surrendered everything to the Colony—paper, shops, farms and all—and went away from there, never to return.

What became of the Colony? The smart fellows who knew so much more than Wayland ran the whole thing into the ground. The brethren had hardly kicked Wayland out before they began to kick each other out. The master-hand and the master-mind being absent, the small men quarreled among themselves, and chaos ensued. The Ruskin Colony went to pieces, and one of the remnants strayed into South Georgia. There it lived a brief, troubled life, and there it died an unlamented death.

What became of the magnificent paper, “The Coming Nation?”

Wayland’s genius had made it; by every law of common sense and common justice it belonged to Wayland.

His brethren did not think so. The paper was as much theirs as his. They took it away from him. Then they didn’t know what to do with it. And it died.

With a pluck which nothing could daunt, Wayland opened out in Girard, Kansas, and modestly commenced another paper. This time he called it the “Appeal to Reason,” but in spirit and purpose it was “The Coming Nation” risen from its grave. Patiently, persistently, fearlessly, Wayland hammered away at Girard until he built up a monster circulation, and again was the owner of an extremely valuable property—the product of him, the said Wayland. No other man could have made that paper. No other man could any more be Wayland, and do what Wayland does, than any other man could be Edison, and do what Edison does.

By every sane and just rule, the Appeal to Reason was Wayland’s property. He had gone into a desert, with a handful of type and a bottle of ink, and by the force of his genius had brought forth a finished product—a successful newspaper.

What happened to him then is only a matter of rumor. Conjectures can also be made from some indignant, sorrowful sentences which he published over his own signature.

But it seems clear that his Ruskin experience was repeated. His angel-brothers made him take his own medicine in heroic doses. The men who had not created the paper, claimed an equal share in it—or something of that sort; and there were the usual points made against Wayland which the small would-be leaders make against the leader.

Rumor had it that Wayland went through a Gethsemane of peculiar bitterness, but just how it all was, the outside world was not given to know. The great soldier in the cause of humanity covered the wounds his own men had made, and was too proud to complain.

But Wayland is now making a mistake.

He is offering land prizes for the largest number of subscribers. He proposes that, as a premium, in a certain competition on subscriptions, he will convey, by deed, a farm in Florida to the fortunate Socialist who gets the greatest number of subscribers to the Appeal to Reason! I can hardly believe what I see in Wayland’s own paper.

What! Is it possible that Wayland has wickedly gone and bought a quantity of land?

Is it possible that he has “robbed” some honest citizen of his real estate?

And can it be true that other Socialists not only want to share in this “robbery,” but want it so bad they will compete for it?

Dear me! I didn’t know that Socialism was like that. If it is, I believe I’ll take some stock in it myself.

My impression has been that the Socialists were opposed to private ownership of land. I have had forcible reminders of that fact in letters which came hot from the enraged writers. Private ownership is “robbery”; that’s the way they write to me. Did I not see a Socialist orator wave his small, white hand gracefully at all the stores, factories and dwellings in St. Louis, in the summer of 1904, and did I not hear him say in his musical voice to the assembled laborers: “All that is yours; go and take it!” Then, with a silk handkerchief he, with courtly gesture, wiped the moisture from his marble brow, and continued: “Don’t take a part of it, take it all. Don’t be satisfied with a loaf, take the whole bakery.”

Then he froze me and Joe Folk with a glare of merciless severity, and continued, “These men”—indicating me and poor Joe, with a supercilious gesture—“these men talk to you about shorter hours of labor, and the Eight Hour day. I don’t want any Eight Hour day: what I want is to live in the best possible manner on the least possible work.”

And now Wayland is going to spoil all this. He is going to quicken the appetite of Socialists for private property. Instead of feeding a million men on the definite expectation of getting a slice of the Astor Estate, at some indefinite time, he is going to reverse the process and feed as many as qualify, on a definite slice of Florida land right now.

I make this prediction: As fast as Wayland makes home-owners out of his followers he will lose crusaders.

Beware Capua, friend Wayland!

A zealous Socialist, who owns nothing, but who is spurred on by that God-given desire for private property, will eagerly compete for Wayland’s prize and will win it. He will pocket the deed, and move to his land. He will find, perhaps, that it does not quite come up to representation; but it is too late to back out. He settles on his seventy acre tract. If it has no house, he builds. If he has one already, he does all that he can to make it more attractive. It is his. When the storm beats without, he snuggles close to his fireside, and thanks God that this is his shelter from the wild night. His wife will lay her loving touches here and there, and the house will take on a look which reflects the individuality of the owners. Flowers in the front yard, vines clinging about the porch, bright pictures on the wall, ferns and grasses in the vase over the mantel, a climbing rose, perhaps, to race for the cone of the house and to throw out its crimson colors from the roof. Toil which one loves will be freely spent on garden and field, for the toiler is working for those he loves best. In a few years, under the care of home-owners, the neighbors will say, “It doesn’t look like the same place.”

And it isn’t the same place. The owners have transformed it. They have put elements of value and beauty there which nature did not supply. They have so directed their labor, their judgment, their good taste, their tender interests, that the home which they have created is as different from the wild land, as the noble watch-dog at the door differs from the gray wolf of the wilderness.

Do you suppose that this man and his wife and his children can ever be made to believe that they have “robbed” some body of that land, and that it is wrong for them to hold it as private property?

Never in the world!

Wayland has made a confession as well as a blunder.

By offering such a prize, he knows he is appealing to one of the strongest human passions—the passion for home-owning.

Every full-sexed girl instinctively feels that her destiny is Motherhood—and she plays with dolls, nurses them, kisses them, hugs them to her little bosom, calls them pet names, fondly dresses them in every beautiful way that her infant fancy can suggest, and rocks them to sleep in the tiny cradle. That is the God-given instinct of Motherhood.

Every full-sexed man, on the other hand, is born with a craving for his mate, and next to that, a home to put her in.

Individualism, crying aloud to me and to you, says “choose your mate and make her yours.” The idea of promiscuous mating is abhorrent. Collective mating would be hideous. You want individual mating. You want to separate your mate from every other woman and from every other man—and if another man invades your individual rights, you slay him like a dog.

There’s the natural feeling, the natural passion, the natural individuality—and everybody knows it.

This craving for individual mating with women, bases itself firmly on the individual home. Give me my mate, and let me take her to my home:—and you have consistency, you have nature, you have a foundation for home-life and all that flows from it—a foundation firm as the everlasting hills.

But the two go together. They are parts of the same system. Surrender one, and you endanger the other.

If you are a Collectivist—your logic will never stop at Collectivism in property only.

If you believe in the one wife, believe also in the home, which shall be yours individually, just as your wife is yours, individually.

Calhoun for Public Ownership

Through the never-failing courtesy of Senator Clay, of Georgia, it was recently my good fortune to come into possession of two bulky volumes issued by the Government, and entitled, “Annual Report of the American Historical Association.” The second volume of this report contains the Private Correspondence of John C. Calhoun, and a most interesting collection of letters it is.

Glancing through these letters hurriedly, I came upon one which Mr. Calhoun wrote to William C. Dawson, of Georgia, in 1835, wherein he declares himself strongly in favor of state-built railroads.

It will be remembered that at that time there was a surplus of revenues in the Treasury.

This surplus was not given away in premiums to bond-holders as Mr. Cleveland gave sixty million dollars a few years ago.

It was not deposited with the National Banks to be used in their business as Mr. Roosevelt now disposes of $56,000,000 of the public funds.

In the days of Calhoun, governmental robbery of the taxpayer for the benefit of the non-taxpayer had not been reduced to a science as it has since been.

In Mr. Calhoun’s day, it was believed that when the Government had collected from the taxpayer a greater sum than was needed for governmental expenses, the excess should, as a matter of common honesty, be returned to the taxpayer.

John C. Calhoun

It being impracticable, however, to restore the money in exact proportion to each individual taxpayer, the Government did the next best thing—it divided the surplus pro rata, among the states.

In his letter to Dawson, Mr. Calhoun estimates the entire amount of the surplus, extending over a series of years, at seventy or eighty million dollars.

The share of Georgia and South Carolina, he estimates at $3,500,000.

Now what does he advise shall be done with this money which has been drawn from the taxpayers of the two states?

He advises that it be spent by Georgia and South Carolina in building railroads to connect those two states with the lines leading to the West and Southwest.

Spent in that manner, the surplus taxes of the two states would be so invested as to benefit all the people of Georgia and South Carolina.

It wouldn’t go to fatten a handful of greedy, millionaire bond-holders.

It wouldn’t go to a few pet National banks to be loaned out as private capital.

It being public money, it would be used for a public purpose; and the great public roads which it would build would belong to and benefit all the people of the two states which had paid the taxes into the Federal Treasury.

Says Mr. Calhoun:

“To make this great fund available for so important an object, the legislatures of the states interested ought to move forthwith. I hope Georgia will take the lead. The action of no other state could have half the influence.”

Mr. Calhoun, with marvelous foresight, sketched the system of railroads which has since been built. Just where he declared in 1835 that the railroads ought to be, they are now to be found.

Had his counsels been followed, those public highways would now be the property of the public. Folly, stupidity, sordid franchise-grabbing had their own way, however, and the magnificent system of highways which Calhoun laid out for the people belongs to the corporations.

Judge Du Bose’s Letter and the Public Debt

Montgomery, Ala., Jan. 6, 1906.

Hon. Thos. E. Watson:

Dear Sir—It is not evidence of dissatisfaction with the common infirmities of the human lot that discussion of the characters of men in public office assumes the latitude of warning to society. Servility of understanding reduces the individual to prostitution of manhood. He can no longer be free, who is dependent in mind and thought. The duty of the American citizen is in the defence of his prerogative of “sovereign,” and upon this principle only may reputation in a public officer become a convertible term with character in public office.

In the year 1769 “Junius” wrote fifty-four letters to the Public Advertiser, a daily journal of London. The publisher was indicted. “Junius” continued to write. He wrote to Sir William Draper; to the Duke of Grafton; to the Ministry; to King George himself. Who “Junius” was, none knew. The few declared his writing turbulent and revolutionary; worthless for the occasion. He held to the record. With indignant invectives he proved the government corruptions. With high disdain he declared he asked for no authority, when he had law and reason on his side, to speak the truth. With keen and pungent retort he exposed the lapse of society in the evidences of iniquity in social leaders.

I would not offend by flattering him “who would not flatter Jove for his power to thunder.” But the beneficiary is ever a debtor to his benefactor. I may write with confidence where expression is due.

The modest caption, “Editorials by Thomas E. Watson,” has already attained to a decisive expectancy in the public mind. In brief time the words that monthly come to us under it will shed a wider and widening light.

Revived iniquities which inspired “Junius” are come for exposure. History repeats itself in facts and interpreters of facts. “Junius” in immortal energy told the people of the Gentlemen in the House of Commons, the Judges upon the Bench, the Lords, and the Dukes, and the Ministry and the King; of malfeasance in office and of decay in private virtue.

The theme then is the theme now. Patrick Henry caught the spirit of “Junius”; the “Editorials by Thomas E. Watson” draw upon the glorious past to shed light upon the living day.

Anxiously we await some words from you upon the most insidious consumer of free institutions—the bonded debt of the United States. Please answer these questions:

1. Is not the Government interest-bearing bond the true foundation of the “trust”?

2. Can the “trust” be eliminated from commerce before the government bonds are paid and extinguished?

3. As long as the bonds remain and money concentrates under their influence and protection in New York, can money so concentrated be redistributed from New York in the sources of industry and commerce by any other process than by “trust” industries process?

Let me illustrate: In the Birmingham (Ala.) manufacturing district there are three great iron manufacturers, to wit: The Tennessee Coal and Iron Company; The Sloss-Sheffield Company; The Republic Company and the Alabama-Consolidated Company.

Continued effort is made to merge two or all of these powerful forces. The Pontifex Maximus in the situation, the great bridge over which the merger, if merger there is to be, must pass, is a bank of issue—a national bank—willing and also able to finance the movement in transit and after consummation.

Now, the willing and capable bank in the premises must possess an adequate supply of non-taxable, interest-bearing Government bonds, upon which, to their full face value, it may issue paper money equal to the exigencies of the great merged corporations. Without the bonds, upon which to issue the money, the bank could not finance the merger.

If the iron manufactories be merged, the necessary sequence must be the merging of the railroads that enter Birmingham. In order to effect the merging of the railroads financing which would duplicate the original example, here cited, must follow.

Commerce, founded on the public debt, is founded upon Government mortgages upon universal private industry.

Must not that kind of commerce subvert free institutions?

Yours truly,

(Signed) John Witherspoon Du Bose.

The writer of the letter on the public debt is the author of the “Life and Times of William L. Yancey,” a book which is a treasure-house of varied and valuable information.

That this Magazine has made such a favorable impression upon so able and representative a man, is of itself a great encouragement to us who are devoting our lives to it.

The question asked by the distinguished Alabamian is a spear-thrust into the very vitals of our vicious system of Class-Rule and Special Privileges.

When Alexander Hamilton set out to make our government as English as the Constitution would admit of, he laid the foundations of his work in the English system of Protection, the English system of Finance, and the English system of Funding the Public Debt.

With his Protective system he meant to favor one class of industries at the expense of others: thus rallying to the support of the government those who shaped its laws to fill their pockets with the money which belonged to other people.

With his system of Finance, and his National Bank of issue, he meant to form a co-partnership between wealth and government. To the favored few was to be delegated that tremendous power to create currency which had always been a prerogative of the Crown until Barbara Villiers, the harlot, wheedled from the dissolute Charles II. that concession to the bankers.

With his system of Funding the Public Debt, Hamilton meant to mortgage the Nation, in perpetuity, to the wealthy few, in order that they might always hold their power over the masses, and their advantage over the government.

William Pitt is said to have remarked cynically, when he saw our government copying the British system: “Their independence will not do them much good if they adopt our system of finance.”

We all remember how bitterly Jefferson combated the Hamilton measures. We can turn to his writings now, and read the scathing terms in which he denounced them. We can also read his predictions of the evils which would come upon us if we allowed Hamilton’s class-law system to develop.

Haven’t the evils come?

The great historic renown won by the Democratic Party and its leaders was gained in combating this class-law system of Alexander Hamilton.

Democrats, and the Democratic Party, always stood in battle array against the Protective System, contending that it was immoral, unjust, oppressive, despoiling the many to enrich the few.

Democrats, and the Democratic Party, always went up against the National Banks to fight them, declaring that such an institution was of deadly hostility to the spirit of republican government.

Democrats, and the Democratic Party, always clamored against the Funding System, and demanded that the Public Debt be paid off.

Those were the memorable, historic principles of Democrats in the years preceding the Civil War—in the years when the Democrats had a mission, a creed; leaders who had convictions, champions, who loved ideas well enough to cherish them more dearly than office.

What was President Jefferson’s proud boast?

That he had so cut down Government expenses that the Public Debt would soon be a thing of the past.

What was Jackson’s proud boast?

That he paid the Public Debt.

That was the golden era of American history.

The National Bank had been abolished.

The National Debt had been paid off.

The Protective principle had been stricken out of the Tariff, and that infamous system had been reduced to a moderate revenue basis.

There was hardly a millionaire in the whole country.

There was hardly a pauper in the republic.

The individual citizen amounted to more, as a man, than he does now. Wages were low, but the money commanded a larger amount of the necessaries of life than the higher wages of today.

Strikes and lockouts were unknown. “We have no poor,” was the matter-of-fact statement made in Congress by Hugh S. Legaré of South Carolina.

“There are no beggars,” said the English visitor, Charles Dickens.

In the whole world there probably was not a people more contented, progressive, and generally well-off than we were in the Forties.

Which were the naturally wealthy sections? The South and West.

Which was the naturally sterile section? The East.

Where is the bulk of all the immense wealth that has been produced since the Civil War? In the East.

How came it there? Class-law took it from the sections where it was produced, and gave it to those who were more cunning and selfish in framing national statutes.

“I see signs of life and hope in the awakening of the people.”

There is no fouler chapter in the history of crime than that which is to be written concerning the manipulation of our National Debt. How many hundreds of millions have been made out of the government by the rascals who juggled with the bonds, it would stagger faith to state. The starting point, where Belmont, Rothschild, Sherman and the Bank of England compelled Congress to depreciate the Greenback, the exchange of bonds at par for Greenbacks at their full face value, the change of the terms of the bond from lawful money to coin, and from coin to gold, the huge commissions paid to favored bankers, the colossal deposits of public funds to be used in private speculations, the sudden and mysterious fortunes accumulated by Secretaries of the Treasury, like Sherman, and by Senators, like Gorman, the stealthy mission of Ernest Seyd, the covert influence of the Haggard & Buell circulars—all these are but high-points in a long journey of national shame, legalized robbery, ruinous prostitution of the powers of government to gorge the few on the life-blood of the many.

Who does not know that our Public Debt could be paid off at any time if the ruling class wanted it paid?

Who does not realize the anomaly of the richest nation on earth bearing a bonded debt as though it were a luxury?

Who does not recognize the grim irony of wearing a bondholder’s chain as though it were a string of pearls?

Wipe out the Public Debt and there would be no foundation for the National Banks. One form of privilege having been abolished, the other would follow. And then others would follow! The bonds are the keystone to the arch. The Public Debt is the nucleus of the system by means of which Wealth runs the Government for its own benefit.

Who wants the Government to economize? Not the Privileged. By no means. If the Government were to economize there would be such a surplus in the Treasury that the Government, for very shame, would have to pay itself out of debt.

The Privileged are determined to keep the Government in debt, and hence there will be no economy.

The fields of expenditure shall widen, widen, and be kept on widening. Salaries shall increase, and increase, and be kept on increasing. Offices shall be multiplied, and multiplied, and be kept on multiplying.

The Panama Canal can get all it wants; let the Philippines cost what they may; give more to the Navy; give more to the Army; give more to Rivers and Harbors; give more to Pensions; give the Railroads four times as much as it is worth to carry the mails, and then give them a special subsidy to keep the contract; give $45,000 for carrying mail to the Island Tahiti when the “cussed foreigner” offered to do it for $3,500; give with so lavish a hand that even the South will get a pull at the sugar-teat, and shall join in the Hallelujah Chorus of “O, ain’t it good!”

A child ought to be able to see the profound policy which underlies the extravagance of the Federal Government.

The Tariff must not be lowered; the Public Debt must not be paid off; the reign of the Trusts must not be threatened:

“Stand Pat!”

That’s the watchword of heartless Plutocracy which has erected its powers upon the three bed-rock measures of Alexander Hamilton.

“Stand Pat!”—blares the bugle-note of Class-law leaders, for they know that a system depends upon all of its component parts. If there should be a leak in the dike, anywhere, the angry ocean might come pouring in.

Where are the Democrats, and the Democratic Party?

What soldiers are pitching their tents upon the historic fields of Democracy?

What lines of battle are forming under the time-honored banners of Jefferson and Jackson?

Alas! The mighty strain and struggle of the Democratic Party during these degenerate days, has been to imitate every bad habit of the Republicans. Democrats vote with the Republicans to continue the National banks, to continue the Public Debt, to continue the Protective system, to embark upon an imperial colonial system, to perpetuate the rule of the Trust, to multiply objects and amounts of National extravagance.

Where do I see signs of life and hope?

In the rapid awakening of the people to the fact that in the name of Party they are being stripped of everything that makes for the independence and prosperity and happiness of the average citizen.

Talmage in Russia: Fourteen Years Ago

After the downfall of Beecher, Doctor Talmage became the most conspicuous preacher in the United States. His sermons and his writings had an immense audience. “Talmage’s Sermon” was a standing headline, in American Monday morning newspapers, and they were widely known in Europe also. No visitor to New York thought of returning home until he had attended services at the Brooklyn Tabernacle and qualified himself to boast of the fact that he had “heard Talmage.”

The fact that Doctor Talmage had been engaged to furnish articles to any periodical, was sufficient to boost its circulation into the tens of thousands. No Lyceum, no Chautauqua, no Lecture Course was complete without Talmage. Formal banquets, in quest of oratorical attractions, never failed to urge the attendance of Doctor Talmage.

Somehow the man became the fashion, the rage. He was the Caucasian Booker Washington. Everybody having agreed that he was a wonderful man, the ball kept on rolling by the law of inertia.

Nobody could tell you wherein he was great; nobody could quote anything remarkable from his writings or his sermons; nobody knew of anything phenomenal that he had done, or was supposed to be able to do. His capacity for the benevolent assimilation of an indefinite number of voluntary donations was strikingly like Booker Washington’s power in the same direction; but beyond the fact that Talmage preached to a large congregation, and wrote books which many people read, his greatness was hard to define.

However, Talmage had his day. He was the fashion. At home and abroad he was a man whom it was the correct thing to treat with distinguished consideration. Foreign potentates, princes and powers knew Talmage as a mighty man of the pen; likewise as a man of infinite capacity for talk; also as a man who traveled with a photographic outfit. Consequently a man to be handled with care; “this side up,” as it were.

His progress through a foreign land, was not merely an incident; it was an event. He was greeted with dress-parade formalities. Foreign princes, potentates and powers knew that Talmage would write a book about them when he got home; that the book would be read by hundreds of thousands; that public opinion would be influenced by it; and that the photographs of the princes, etc., would appear in the book. Consequently the smiling faces which were turned toward the Talmage Camera by the helpless potentates etc., were almost distressing in their laborious amiability.

As to Russia, Doctor Talmage seems to have gone there by imperial invitation and prearrangement.

“Stepping from the Moscow train on returning to St. Petersburg, an invitation was put in my hand inviting me to the palace.... I had already seen the Crown Prince in his palace.... The royal carriage was waiting, and the two decorated representatives of the palace took me to a building where a suite of three rooms was appointed me, where I rested, lunched, examined the flowers and walked under the trees.” Then the royal carriage came again, took him through the magnificent and beautiful grounds to the palace of the Czar. During his stay, officials crowded around him, lavished attentions upon him, stuffed his ears with glowing accounts of the lovely conditions prevailing in Russia, and made Doctor Talmage feel good generally.

Russian autocracy laid itself out to capture Talmage, and it captured him completely.

From a picture on page 408 of his book, I infer that Russian enthusiasm broke from every restraint, and that he was caught up in the arms of a delirious populace, and borne triumphantly through the streets, on the shoulders of his worshipers. The picture represents Russian citizens (who bear a disconcerting resemblance to New York dandies), waving their hats wildly—(Derby hats)—and shows Doctor Talmage sitting gracefully upon the shoulders of two elegantly dressed enthusiasts; and the silk hat of the Doctor is held aloft in his eloquent right hand, while his left is extended in what I take to be his favorite gesture. The picture represents all the Russians with their mouths shut. It also represents Talmage with his mouth shut—a fact which arouses a suspicion that the picture is spurious. Under such circumstances, Talmage could no more have kept his mouth shut than Bryan could.

Other pictures show Doctor Talmage in the act of responding from his carriage to a street ovation; also of rising to make a few remarks to a grand gathering in a hall draped with the Stars and Stripes; also of making a speech on the arrival of a ship from the United States bringing bread to feed the Russian peasants.

There are, also, pictures showing Talmage seated on one side of a small table and the Czar seated on the other; Talmage in the act of being received into the family circle of the Czar; Talmage standing erect in his carriage, hat outstretched, in the act of returning the salutes of hat-waving crowds which pause and look pleasant, apparently, until Talmage’s picture man can draw his focus, spring his slide, and say, “That’ll do.”

I state all this to show the readers how public opinion is sometimes made to order. The Russian autocracy knew that Talmage was the best possible press-agent they could use. He was intensely vain, easily flattered, a snob to the core, a man whose very soul quivered with delight under the smile of royalty.

There had been a great deal of abuse heaped upon Russia. The newspapers, magazines, political pamphlets had been telling the civilized world a vast deal about the barbarities practiced by the Russian government. George Kennan, the brave American traveler, had risked all the rigors of Siberia to see for himself how prisoners were treated there. His reports had thrilled the hearts of millions with furious indignation against the Czar, and with profound pity for the victims of imperial tyranny. Tolstoy, Stepniak, Kropotkin and many others had been heard.

Russian autocracy was in bad odor throughout the Christian world, and if such a man as Talmage could be enlisted for the defence, it would be a fine thing to do. His voice would carry weight throughout Europe and the United States. Therefore, it is reasonably certain that the Russian government had an axe to grind when it made the Talmage visit an occasion for a series of ovations.

At any rate, the Russian government got from Talmage when he came to write his book of travels, a chapter of the most fulsome, least discriminating praise that you will ever read.

Russia was all right, in every respect. Travelers were never subjected to vexatious delays or examinations—for Talmage had not been delayed or vexed. He actually carried into Russia some books which criticised the government, and the magnanimous officials made no objection. There was no religious persecution in Russia! On the contrary, Jews and Gentiles, of all descriptions, could worship God in any manner that pleased them. The Government never interfered.

If a nobleman conspired against the life of the Czar, he was arrested, put into a carriage, blindfolded, driven about for many hours to make him believe that he was on his way to Siberia, and he was then set down, at his own door, safe, unharmed, free!

If a poet wrote scurrilous verses about the Empress, he was brought into the family circle of the Czar and asked to read the lines in the hearing of the lady. That was the worst.

Siberia was described as a country of Italian softness of climate; and banishment to the Siberian prisons, mines, etc., was altogether better for criminals than ordinary jails.

Doctor Talmage defended Russian autocracy, Russian police, Russian prisons, indignantly hurling back upon the slanderers of Russia their foul accusations.

Listen to him—Talmage:

“But how about the knout, the cruel Russian knout, that comes down on the bare back of agonized criminals? Why, Russia abolished the knout before it was abolished from our American navy.”

Think of reading this stuff at a time when the ears of the world are yet tingling at the sound of the Cossack whips!

Think of reading this when we know that before Talmage’s book was written, and while it was being written, and ever since it was written, Russian peasants, by thousands, have been flogged every year for non-payment of taxes!

“The Emperor received me with much heartiness. And at the first glance, seeing him to be a splendid gentleman, with no airs of pretension and as artless as any man I ever saw, it seemed to me that we were old friends from the start.”

Doctor Talmage did not visit the Russian prisons which he defended; did not go to Siberia, which he compared to Italy; did not make any investigations of peasant-life; did not go among the working classes; did not talk with Tolstoy, nor any man of the dissatisfied elements. In fact, Talmage declares, in effect, that nobody was dissatisfied.

Listen to Doctor Talmage, Page 422:

“He who charges cruelty on the imperial family and the nobility of Russia, belies men and women as gracious and benignant as ever breathed oxygen.”

Shades of von Plehve!

When we read such lines as the above and recall how that gracious and benignant nobility have drenched Russia with blood of peasants, Jews, city workingmen, republican agitators—littering the streets with ghastly heaps of murdered men and women and children—we may well stand amazed at the success with which the wool was pulled over the eyes of the Rev. T. De Witt Talmage, D. D.

“There are no kinder people on earth than the Russians, and to most of them cruelty is an impossibility.”

“Dr. Talmage did not go to Siberia, which he compared to Italy.”

Of the Czar, Doctor Talmage says:

“He’s doing the best things possible for the nation which he loved, and which as ardently loved him.... Things are going on marvelously well, and I do not believe that out of 500,000 Russians you will find more than one person who dislikes the Emperor, and so that Calumny of dread of assassination drops so flat it can fall no flatter.”

“I prophecy for Nicholas the Second a long and happy reign.”—Dr. Talmage

According to Doctor Talmage the story that the Czar dreaded the assassin was a base Calumny, and he, Talmage, flattened it out in his book “so flat it can fall no flatter.”

I wonder what the present Czar would feel, think and say if he could now read Talmage’s comfortable assurances on the subject of “dread of assassination.”

While in Russia, Doctor Talmage saw the Rulers, and no others. He talked with the governing class, and no others. He saw a ship from the United States bringing bread to the Russian farmers, but it never occurred to his mind that a drouth in one portion of the huge Russian Empire was no good reason why the New World should have to save Russian peasants from starvation.

Looking only on the surface, seeing only what his “old friend” the Czar, wished him to see, he praised the Russian government in terms of the most unqualified eulogy.

Before the Talmage book was ready for the press, Prince Cantacuzene, the Russian Minister Plenipotentiary at Washington, summoned Doctor Talmage to the deck of a Russian man-of-war, in Philadelphia harbor, and presented to the enraptured American “a complete gold-enameled tea service accompanied by a message of love which I cannot now think of without deep emotion, since Emperor Alexander has disappeared from the palaces of earth to take his place, as I believe, in the palaces of heaven.”

In behalf of the Czar, the formalities of a trial on Judgment Day, were waived, it would seem; and the Czar went direct from Peterhof to his mansion in the skies.

The Emperor Alexander, it is well-known, was succeeded by his son Nicholas, the reigning Czar.

Talmage’s book was published in 1896. Here is what he predicted:

“I prophesy for Nicholas the Second a long and happy reign!”

That was a very natural inspiration. Talmage had delved into Russian affairs and found conditions ideal. The government was mild, just, progressive. The people were contented, and devoted to the Czar. There was no cruelty in the administration, and no suffering among the peasants, excepting the locality affected by the drought. The bread had been sent to feed the peasants, and all would be well. The Knout had been abolished. The serf, freed, was happy. Religious toleration was in practice; the circulation of political literature unhampered.

There was not a cloud upon the horizon. George Kennan, Stepniak, Tolstoy, Kropotkin had been slandering vilely the most humane Government of Europe—a Government which Talmage compared to ours, to our discomfiture in various respects.

With a Podsnapian wave of his hand, Talmage said to Europe, “Let this international defamation of Russia cease.”

With that Royal welcome fresh in his memory, with those public ovations still ringing in his ears, with that “complete gold-enameled tea service” gladdening his eye, with the “message of love” conveyed by the Prince Cantacuzene still warming his heart, how could Doctor Talmage prophesy otherwise?

The spirit of the occasion demanded prophecy, and there it stands recorded, page 432:

“I prophesy for Nicholas the Second a long and happy reign!”

A Prophet Whose Voice Was Not Heeded

Almost in sight of where I live, there is a heap of stones that marks the spot where stood the hut in which George McDuffie was born.

His folks were “poor folks.” Concerning his ancestry nothing is known.

When I was a boy somebody told me a story to this effect:

Little George McDuffie was at the cowpen where his mother was milking, and he had a calf by the ears holding it away from the cow. A traveler, in a buggy, drove up and stopped. Seeing the boy, and not realizing the absorbing character of the boy’s job, the wayfaring man called out:

“Come here, Bubbie, and hold my horse.”

To which the lad replied: “If you’ll come here and hold my calf, I’ll go there and hold your horse.”

According to the story, the traveler was so tickled by the boy’s readiness of wit, that he took a fancy to him and secured him a position as clerk in a store in the city of Augusta.

Well, George McDuffie wasn’t much of a clerk. He loved to read books better than to wait upon customers. It came to pass that his fondness for books attracted the attention of one of the Calhouns—not John C., but his brother, I believe—and Mr. Calhoun placed the boy at the celebrated school of Dr. Waddell to be educated.

The balance is history. McDuffie became one of the greatest legal advocates and political orators this country has ever known.

Later in life he became involved in a newspaper controversy which drew him into two duels. In one of these he received a wound which injured his spine and affected his brain.

In his melancholy decline, and not long before his death, McDuffie was moved by a yearning to come back to Georgia and visit the spot where his boyhood home had stood. He came from South Carolina by private conveyance, and spent the night with my grandfather. Next day he went on down to the Sweet-water Creek neighborhood where the McDuffie hut had been. My father used to tell me that when they led the broken statesman to the spot, pointed out the remaining shade tree and the dismantled chimney, they drew away, leaving him alone with his memories. After awhile they returned to find Mr. McDuffie sitting upon the stones of the ruined hearth, crying like a child.

When the boy, George McDuffie, left the store in Augusta and went over into South Carolina to go to school, he carried all of his earthly possessions in one little pine box.

When he became a man he made much money, owned large estates and moved as a peer among the proudest leaders of his day.

But he never parted with the little pine box. It was a souvenir of the old days of youth and poverty. It was sacred in his eyes, and he treasured it. When his mind was almost gone, he would put his arms about the box, and tell again the story of how it had held all that he owned when he came into South Carolina—a poor boy, on his way to the great battle-field of life.

Did you know that to this almost forgotten statesman, George McDuffie, belongs the distinction of having made the most powerful and most prophetic speech that was ever made in Congress against our damnable Tariff System?

Well, it does. Such men as Nelson Dingley and Joseph H. Walker were good judges in such a matter, and they regarded McDuffie’s argument as the strongest ever made against the New England scheme of enriching its Capitalists by plundering other sections. Dr. Goldwin Smith should also be a competent judge, and you will find that McDuffie’s speech is the one he quotes from in his “Political History of the United States.”

George McDuffie

Mr. McDuffie’s great speech against the protective system is too long to be reproduced here; but in the concluding paragraphs he predicted with such clearness of vision the reign of rotten business and rotten politics which now afflicts us that his words read like inspired prophecy:

“Sir, when I consider that, by a single bill like the present, millions of dollars may be transferred annually from one part of the community to another; when I consider the disguise of disinterested patriotism under which the basest and most profligate ambition may perpetrate such an act of injustice and political prostitution, I cannot hesitate, for a moment, to pronounce this system the most stupendous instrument of corruption ever placed in the hands of public functionaries.

“It brings ambition and avarice and wealth into a combination which it is fearful to contemplate, because it is almost impossible to resist.

“Do we not perceive, at this very moment, the extraordinary and melancholy spectacle of less than one hundred thousand capitalists, by means of this unhallowed combination, exercising an absolute and despotic control over the opinions of eight millions of free citizens and the fortunes and destinies of ten millions?

“Sir, I will not anticipate or forbode evil. I will not permit myself to believe that the Presidency of the United States will ever be bought and sold. But I must say that there are certain quarters of this Union in which, if the candidate for the Presidency should come forward with this Harrisburg tariff in his hand, nothing could resist his pretensions if his adversary were opposed to this unjust system of oppression.”

“Indeed, Sir, when I contemplate the extraordinary infatuation which a combination of capitalists and politicians have had the heart to diffuse over more than one-half of this Union—when I see the very victims who are about to be offered up to satiate the voracious appetite of this devouring Moloch, paying their ardent and sincere devotions at his bloody shrine; I confess I have been tempted to doubt whether mankind was not doomed, even in its most enlightened state to be the dupe of some form of imposture, and the victim of some form of tyranny.

How American Capital Protects American Labor

“Sir, in casting my eyes over the history of human idolatry, I can find nothing, even in the darkest ages of ignorance and superstition, which surpasses the infatuation by which a confederated priesthood of politicians and manufacturers have bound the great body of the people of the farming States of this Union as if by a spell, to this mighty scheme of fraud and delusion.”

Bear in mind that this speech was made in 1824.

Then look around you and see how prophetically Mr. McDuffie pictured the future.

The Presidency is bought and sold. Congress is bought and sold. The confederated priesthood of politicians and manufacturers do dominate an infatuated people whom it deludes and plunders.

The Trusts are nothing in the world but the legitimate children of Privilege and Protection.

Campaign boodle-funds are nothing in the world but the sop which the Corrupt Combination of Capitalists pay to renew the lease which they hold on the Government.

And, as Mr. McDuffie said, the most astounding feature of the whole diabolical system is the completeness with which the politicians and the Privileged can dupe the victims of Protection into the belief that Privilege benefits the unprivileged.

With the doors of immigration standing wide open vomiting into our industrial world all the cheap white labor of the universe, our Protected capitalists are still able to convince our wage-earners that American capital protects American labor from the competition of foreign “pauper” labor!

Having ground down the price of factory labor to such a low point that they can undersell foreigners in the foreign market, our Privileged and Protected Capitalists can nevertheless convince American laborers that the motive for high tariffs is to enable the Capitalist to pay big wages!

And they swallowed it—the wage-earners swallow it, meekly, blindly, trustfully.

The record of a Century teaches them nothing.

The evidences of their own senses are ignored.

The very factory hands who at Fall River lived off the soup of the Salvation Army devoutly believed that if it hadn’t been for the Protective system they wouldn’t even have got the soup.

The factory girl who is paid five dollars per week, and who, when she complains that she cannot live on the wage, is sardonically advised to get a gentleman friend, actually believes that were it not for Privilege and Protection she would not get the five dollars.

God in heaven! No wonder that George McDuffie expressed his doubt as to whether the masses could ever be enlightened. No wonder his prophetic speech vibrated with an undertone of despair.

Less than one-tenth of the laborers of this country own their homes; yet they have been Protected for a hundred years.

Less than a quarter million men own practically the entire wealth of the whole United States; yet Privilege and Protection are not for their benefit.

You go to the millions of Unprivileged and Unprotected citizens and you point out to them how they are plundered by being made to pay twice as much as they should on every article which they buy.

They understand it; they admit the fact; but the corrupt politician has taught them what to say.

This is the lesson:

“Yes; we pay twice as much as the goods are worth, but it is patriotic and humane, because we thereby enable millions of American wage-earners to get big wages.”

Fine, isn’t it?

If the man who repeats that little lesson, and believes it, would go into the districts where Protection is and where the system has been at work longest he will find himself in precisely the places where wages are lowest, where Capitalists are harshest, where squalor and vice are rankest, and where the maddened victims of our soulless wage-system are nursing in their hearts the passions of hell.

The Highest Office

Let seasons come and go, let the sunlight and shadows fall where God’s pleasure puts them—do your duty as conscience and reason reveal it to you. Let no other man measure your work or your responsibilities; let no artful sophistry, in favor of the expedient, veil from your steadfast eyes the summits of Right. Let parties rise and fall; let time-servers flop and flounder, let the heedless praise of the hour lay its withering garlands at the feet of him who will purchase them by bending to every passing breeze, every popular whim, every local prejudice.

Do thou look higher if joy and strength and peace and pride are to be thine. In this brief life (hardly worth the living) know this one thing: that a man’s honor should be just as dear to him as a woman’s virtue is to her. Did the Roman girls not go gladly to the lions, to the bloody death in the arena, rather than to recant their Christian faith, or to accept a lawless lover? Did not the Armenian woman, a few years ago, leap to death over the precipice, rather than to apostatize or to be violated? Isn’t the ground still wet with the life-drops of poor Else Kroegler, who let her white throat be gashed, and gashed, and gashed, by the black devil who assailed her, till her life was gone, rather than to live dishonored? And shall a man be less heroic than a woman? Is there nothing within us that cannot be bought? Is there no Holy of Holies of conviction and principle, into which the corruptor shall not enter? Is there nothing that we hold sacred as the citadel of proud, fearless, upright manhood?

Once upon a time a barbarous peasant worked his way upward and onward, until he wore the imperial purple of Rome; and he said: “I have gained all the honors and none of them have value.” Did not Cæsar, himself, grow sick at heart of the eminence he had wickedly won, and say that he had lived long enough?

If we must bow to what is wrong, flatter what we despise, preach what we disbelieve, and deny what we feel to be true, is success thus won anything but a gilded dishonor?

To be a man, such a man as you know God would have you be—manly, truthful, honest—scorning meanness, hating lies, loathing deceit, meeting the plain duties of life, and shirking none of its plain responsibilities—is not that the highest office you can fill?

Editorial Comment

The Washington Post is generally accurate in its statements of facts, but it erred in saying that one of the legal grounds for divorce in Georgia is insanity occurring after the marriage. Our statute book is not disgraced by a provision of that kind.

Insanity is a misfortune for which, as a rule, the victim is not to blame. Besides, it is a disease which is often cured, or a terrible visitation which sometimes passes away as suddenly as it came.

Suppose the Legislature deprives the afflicted wife of possibly her only protector by granting the husband a divorce; suppose the wife then regains her sanity—would not the situation be horrible?

When I reflect upon the shameful things the Wall Street millionaires have led our Legislature to do, I am by no means certain that some Ryan or Morgan, tired of his old wife, might secure from the Hamp McWhorter machine a legislative license to go and buy a fresh one—but such a deal has not, as yet, been consummated.

Congress is beginning to catch on to the enormous frauds in the weighing of the mails. In the first issue of this Magazine, I called attention to the notorious fact that certain Congressmen, who belong to the railroads, were in the habit of lending to their bosses the frank whose mark on mail matter entitles it to go through the mails without payment of postage.

For example: Suppose the Southern Railroad wants the use of the frank of the Honorable Leonidas F. Livingston, whom “the Democratic Party” of the Atlanta, Ga., District sends to Congress. In that case, the Honorable Leonidas will lend his bosses his rubber stamp which, being inked and pressed upon a sack of mail matter, leaves thereon this inscription:

L. F. Livingston, M. C.

This inscription being placed upon the sack, the postal authorities are compelled by law to carry the sack to any part of the United States free of charge. The magic letters “M. C.” which stand, of course, for “Member of Congress,” are as good as gold in the postal service. Now why does the Southern Railroad want to use the frank of the Honorable Leonidas?

For this reason:

The Government pays the railroads for carrying the mails, at so much per pound; to get at the “average” for the whole year, the Government weighs the mail for ninety days; therefore it is hugely to the advantage of the railroads to make the “average” as high as possible; and consequently the railroads themselves crowd into the mails, during those ninety days, every God-blessed piece of old junk they can lay their hands on.

See?

But if the railroads had to pay postage on that old junk, their profits would be cut down to just that extent. They would have to pay thousands of dollars to the Government, in postage, during the ninety days.

By getting from the Honorable Leonidas the use of his frank, the railroad can escape payment of postage on the old junk. By the collusion of the Honorable Leonidas, the Southern Railroad is not only enabled to swindle the Government in the creation of a fraudulent “average,” but they even unload on the Government the expense of carrying the bogus mail which constitutes the swindle.

In the first number of this Magazine, I gave Livingston’s name as that of one of the rascals who help the railroad swindle the people.

I give it again.

The Honorable Leonidas is one of the unscrupulous knaves who covers the multitude of his individual sins with the generous, rubber-coat mantle of “the Democratic Party.”

The time is rapidly approaching in this country when a scoundrel will be treated as a scoundrel, regardless of his being a member of the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. Thieves and corporation doodles will not forever escape detection and infamy by crying out “I am a Democrat,” or “I am a Republican.”

The gaping world is told that the Princess Ena, of the Royal House of Great Britain, is about to marry Alfonso, the decadent lad who is King of Spain. The Royal House of Great Britain holds the throne upon the Parliamentary Condition that it shall be Protestant. The Act which recognized the Hanoverian succession reads: “The Princess Sophia and the heirs of her body being Protestants.”

But the crown of Spain would not be allowed to rest upon the head of a heretic. No, indeed! The King and Queen of Spain must be Catholics.

But King Alfonso wants the fair Princess Ena, and the ambitious Ena wants to become Queen of Spain.

Is there any way out? Oh, yes. The Princess Ena, of the Royal House whose Protestant faith is a matter of Parliamentary measure, being determined to marry a King whose crown depends upon his being a rigid Catholic, happily solves the problem by “turning” Catholic.

Very well. If to Henry of Navarre “Paris was well worth a mass,” why shouldn’t the throne of Spain be worth as much to the fair Princess Ena?

And, by the way, the Princess Ena has had some illustrious examples set her in the matter of changing one’s creed.

Did not unhappy little Anna Gould “turn” Catholic to ease the conscience of her precious Castellane?

And did not the daughter of the American “house” of Mackay “turn” Catholic when she became an Italian princess?

Human motives are pretty much the same everywhere, and to many people religion is a mere matter of respectable conformity to the manners and customs of those who make up the environment.

John D. Rockefeller is running about from one hiding place to another, to keep from being found by the officers of the law. How silly. Why does he not come into court with a shattered memory and a pack of perjuries like some of the other high-rolling rascals who have been before the courts recently?

As to one-third of the things which might land him in the penitentiary, if he admitted them, he can say, “I decline to answer on advice of counsel.”

To another third he can say that he does not remember.

To the remaining third, he can make perjured replies.

Then old John will be in line with Rogers, McCall, McCurdy, Depew and some others who have recently figured in the New York legal proceedings.

While Rockefeller is hiding out like a common criminal, would it not be appropriate for one of his high-priced preachers to come forth in another sermon, or interview, or signed article, explaining to us common mortals, what a good and pious, and benevolent man old John D. is?

The Recording Angel must have a busy time trying to keep straight the accounts of some of our high-priced city preachers.

There was Bishop Potter, for instance, who choked off the Reverend Mr. Chew when that subordinate divine wanted to give us a piece of his mind concerning Life Insurance rottenness in New York. The high-priced Bishop put himself in the attitude of warding off attack from the robbers of widows and orphans.

The Constitution of the United States expressly declares that no money shall be taken from the Treasury without an appropriation by Congress.

Therefore, when Lyman Gage and Leslie Shaw, Secretaries of the Treasury, took $15,000,000 out of the Treasury and placed it in the Standard Oil Bank in New York City they violated the supreme law of the land. The $56,000,000 which Mr. Roosevelt’s administration has been allowing the National Banks to hold and to use is held and used in violation of the Constitution. What do our big men care for the law? Nothing. The law is for the small and the weak.

It was not your mother or sister or wife, but it might have been, and therefore the thing that happened to her should stir your blood.

A lady who is every bit as good, so far as anybody knows or says, as Mrs. Roosevelt, went to the White House to see the President on business. She wanted to plead for her husband, who had been arbitrarily thrown out of a good office at the instance of a very contemptible cur named Hull, who happened to be a Congressman, and chairman of the House Committee on Military Affairs.

A swell-head White House official named Barnes, told the lady that the President was engaged and could not see her.

She remarked that she would wait until the President was disengaged—that she meant to stay until she did see him.

In other words, she placed herself in the position of “the importunate widow.” She was desperately in earnest; her husband had been foully wronged; it was a matter of vital importance to her; and her wifely heart made her brave the rebuff of asinine Barnes.

Mr. Roosevelt had recently returned to the White House from a “progress” through the Southern provinces, during which progress he had exhibited himself to his admiring constituents as the most affable, approachable, genial and generous of men. What was more natural than for Mrs. Morris to think that a little persistence on her part would bring the gallant Teddy to the front, beaming with that glorified grin and extending that cordial hand which had so recently enraptured the people of the South?

Stage-play, however, is one thing and “business” is another. Teddy is a genial democrat when playing to the grand-stand, and a bumptious autocrat in some of his White House moods.

To cut the long story short, the lady was ordered out of the White House, and when she kept her seat she was seized upon by three white men and one negro and forcibly dragged out. Her silk dress was torn, her ornaments scattered, her flesh bruised. The white men pulled her by the arms and shoulders, the negro held her by the legs; she was dragged through the mud to a cab, thrown into it like a common criminal and driven off to a criminal’s resort, the House of Detention.

A more shocking outrage has never been committed at the White House. It was indecent, it was brutal, it was despotic, it was violative of all democratic usage and of every human consideration. The poor lady was so terribly frightened, so rudely handled, subjected to such a public and unprovoked humiliation that she was thrown into a fever and confined to her bed for many days.

No—I have already stated that it was not your sister, or your mother or your wife whose legs were held by Roosevelt’s nigger while his three white ruffians dragged her, screaming, through the mud, and flung her, bruised and frantic, into a cab to be driven off as criminals are driven.

But it might have been.

And when you consider the incident from that point of view you will admire the courage with which Senator Ben Tillman denounced the outrage, while you regard with utter scorn the cowardly attitude of the great majority in both branches of Congress who were afraid to say what they thought.

Mr. Roosevelt was not originally responsible for the outrage, but he chose to become so by his refusal to express any regrets at the occurrence, and by his failure to rebuke the brutes who were guilty of such needless violence to a respectable visitor at a public office which belonged as much to her as to anybody else on this earth.

Maximum and Minimum Benefits, at Least

There is talk of congress adopting the maximum and minimum tariff plan. Haven’t we something of that sort in force now.

Bart., in Minneapolis Journal

The Builder of the City

Tom L. Johnson—“That, sir, is the root of all municipal mischief, and it must be dug out clean!”

Bengough, in The Public

“EVERYBODY WORKS FOR RYAN”

F. Opper, in N. Y. American

Lookin’ T’wards Home
BY HELEN FRANCES HUNTINGTON

“No, we ain’t a’needin’ any more hands right now,” said Polly Ann in a brisk, business-like voice that discouraged prolixity on the part of the loitering applicant whom Polly knew to be unreliable from a working point of view, for he bore all the outward marks of shiftlessness which her eyes had been trained to discern at one comprehensive glance.

“I reckon I’d as well wait an’ see the boss,” was the hopeful answer.

“It won’t do no good to wait, ’cause he ain’t got no work for you,” Polly reiterated with dry patience. “’Sides, the boss is too busy to waste any time outside o’ business.”

“Oh, well, then I’ll call again,” the applicant observed amiably. He shuffled out, hands in pockets, and Polly Ann eased back in her chair behind the railed-in desk that overlooked the long rows of pallid, expressionless faces bowed over the spindles that whirred monotonously through the dull roar of machinery. Polly was used to the noise; its absence, during the brief Sunday rests, made her nerves ache dimly as if their rightful functions had been forcibly suspended, for she had grown up within the mills. Her mother had been first to succumb to the insidious fever which sooner or later fastens upon the unsound, poorly nourished slaves of the great White Despot known to the world as the Southern Cotton Mill industry. Polly’s young sister had followed their mother to her quiet rest within a year, after which the overburdened, inadequate father “aimed” to return to the upland, clayey farm which he had so hopefully abandoned two years before; but before he could save enough money to cover his debts he added to his burdens by marrying a factory widow with four pallid, old-young children. Polly lived with them until they moved to Atlanta in hopes of financial betterment, then she assumed the brunt of home-making for her two undisciplined brothers. Meanwhile, her industry had increased as her thin, deft fingers became more and more proficient. Her interest in her fellow-slaves broadened into a mute, protective supervision which the keen-witted boss recognized and rewarded by placing her in a position of trust which, humble though it was, relieved her of the bitter grind of mill labor.

Spring was in the air. It looked in at the dim windows and drifted through the open doors where the sunlight drenched the worn, splintered floor with fine gold. Polly recognized something familiar—the sweet, far-reaching scent of wild azaleas that grew thick and tall along the distant Chattahoochee hill; she closed her eyes and let her fancy drift back to the green pastures and still waters of the old haunts of her heart’s desire, until her revery was shattered by a human appeal.

It was a sunny young voice that recalled Polly to tangible things, and it belonged to a very young girl of the “cracker” type, with a face of spring-like innocence, who introduced herself as “Mis’ Lomux, from Lumpkin,” with a smile of such irresistible sweetness that Polly’s thin, sallow face lighted with answering pleasure.

“You-all’s got a job fer me this time, ain’t you?” the stranger asked anxiously. “I was here last Chuesday, an’ the boss said he ’lowed he’d have a place fer me by today. I aimed to git here right soon this mornin’ so’s to start work on time, but the chillun give out in spite of all I could do, an’ I was jest obleeged to stop along with ’em at a house where the folks promised to keep ’em till they got rested.”

“The boss is right busy now,” said Polly in very kind voice. “I don’t much believe he needs any more hands, ’cause he tuk in a new batch Saturday, but you can wait an’ see what he says. Set down an’ rest yourself till he comes along.”

“He surely will give me somethin’ to do,” Mis’ Lomux said hopefully, “’cause he done promised he would.”

“Well, mebbe he will, then. Did you ever work in a mill afore?”

“No’m, but I can learn real fast. They say ’tain’t hard.”

“No, ’tain’t to say hard, but it’s turrible wearin’,” Polly answered. “You don’t look real stout, nuther.”

“That’s one reason why I come,” Mis’ Lomux admitted frankly, “though I’m stout a’ plenty to putter all day without restin’ any bit. Last fall I was tuk with a spell o’ fever an’ sence then I jest ain’t been able to do like I uster. Plowin’ an’ sech-like beats me plum out in no time. I tried my best to take Tobe’s place after he left, but I jest couldn’t make out no way.”

“Who’s Tobe?” Polly interrupted with deepening interest. “Your brother?”

“No’m, he’s my husband.”

“Your husband!” Polly echoed surprisedly. “You look dreadful young to be married. How long have you been married?”

“Be ten weeks on Sunday,” the bride replied unenthusiastically.

“An’ he’s left you a’ready!”

“Yes’m.” Mis’ Lomux nodded her blond head solemnly. “He done broke his promise an’—an’ I don’t aim to live with him no more, ever.”

Polly Ann searched the flower-like face with something akin to pity. “You ain’t a’ carin,’ are you?” she asked in a whisper.

Mis’ Lomux’s denial was emphatic, but unconvincing. “I ’lowed all husbands was like pa,” she admitted sadly, “an’ that’s why I married Tobe so quick after he axed me. You see when pa died that throwed me an’ the chillun onto the county, with me not able to do fer ’em like I would a’ been if I hadn’t had the fever. What to do I didn’t know ’cause the chillun couldn’t work by their selves to do any good. When Tobe Lomux sent me word that he’d tak the hull lot of us if I’d have him, I was glad enough to marry him on that account, no matter what come. Not that I got ary thing agin Tobe—no one ain’t fer that matter,” she interrupted herself to say extenuatingly, “for he’s a real steady, honest person. Tobe’s high-tempered, though. Fust thing I knowed his folks come meddlin’ round talkin’ about him havin’ to do fer a’ passel o’ lazy chilluns an’ sech-like an’ it warn’t no time fore Tobe had put the chilluns to work like a gang o’ niggers. Me! Why, I jest couldn’t stand that not fer a minit! I up an’ told Tobe to hire his own niggers or quit us, ’cause them pore chillun warn’t goin’ to be nobody’s slaves. An’ he went”; she finished, growing very white and cold.

“He warn’t much or he wouldn’t a’ acted that way,” was Polly’s stern verdict.

The bride winced. “I aim to show ’im we can git on without him an’ his uppidy folks,” she retorted, with a flame of delicate color. “That’s why I come here, jest to make a livin’ fer us all till I can stouten up agin crap-making time next spring. By that time the two little boys’ll be big enough to help with the plowin’. Boys grows a heap in a year.”

“Did you say you brung the chillun along with you?” Polly wanted to know.

“Yes’m, we all set out together yesterday mornin’. Tain’t to say so dreadful fur—jest eighteen miles—but they ain’t used to travelin’ steady, an’ they give plum out early this mornin’, so I left ’em along with some folks while I come on ahead to git work.”

Polly Ann’s interest was of a keenly personal order, which admitted of vast concessions in favor of the second applicant for the already crowded ranks of mill laborers. She had turned the first comer away almost at sight, but Mis’ Lomux was different—her plaintive needs appealed to Polly Ann’s warm, starved little heart in a fashion quite unknown to her since her mother and sister had passed beyond her faithful care.

“Where’s your things?” Polly asked after a museful pause.

“We’re totin’ all we’ve got,” Mis’ Lomux answered frankly. “Pa didn’t have much of anythin’ when he died an’ I sold what little there was to git the chillun fit close to come down here in.”

Polly rose and stepped from the little platform with an air of decision. “You set there while I go hunt the boss,” said she.

So Mis’ Lomux waited hopefully until Polly returned from the fore part of the great building to say that there would be a vacancy in the spindle department the very next day. “You’d better fetch the chillun right along,” Polly advised, “’cause you’ll have to be ready to go to work at seven o’clock tomorrow mornin’. There’s a’ empty shack at the end of Factory Row that you can rent real cheap. I’ll see about rentin’ it while you’re gone.”

Polly saw them pass the mills late that afternoon, a dusty, tired band of wayfarers, each carrying small, queer-shaped bundles which contained the sum of their meager possessions, and felt herself glow with satisfaction as she thought of what she had contrived to put into the rough little shack, in the way of household furnishings. She went over after work hours to assist with the setting to rights.

By the end of the first week Mis’ Lomux and the two little boys, who were to help with the next year’s crop, had obtained steady employment in the mills. Their bright faces gleamed out among the listless, pallid, faded faces of the “old hands,” with primrose freshness that attracted Polly Ann’s eyes many, many times during the long noisy day; but soon their morning glow waned and the difference grew less and less marked except for Mis’ Lomux’s illuminating smile which never dimmed or wavered, early or late, while the little loved faces turned towards hers. The delicately rounded girlish figure grew thin, and Mis’ Lomux drooped more and more just as Polly’s mother and sister had drooped before doom overtook them, yet never a word escaped her patient lips. There was, indeed, no time for self-pity, for all her thoughts were centered upon the children whom she sheltered from every harsh word and look with a maternal zeal that never failed of its loving purpose, in spite of the children’s wilfulness apparent to every one but Mary Lomux. Polly realized shrewdly how it had been with Tobe, whose judgment had lacked the softening influence of love, for although the children were of naturally lovable disposition, Mary had undeniably spoiled them from a man’s view-point.

Every Sunday morning Mis’ Lomux piloted her little flock away to the hills which seemed to beckon her far beyond the noise and smoke and grime of Factory Row to the place of her heart’s desire. Polly Ann often accompanied her friend because the occasion afforded opportunity to add to the meager lunches in a manner that lapped over several succeeding meals. On such occasions the girls talked continually of the tranquil, humble joys of home, while the children lay in the grass, too tired to play or chatter. Mary comforted their weariness with a promise of a speedy reprieve.

“We’re goin’ home in the spring, sure,” she would say with illuminating smiles, “an’ when you’ve been there a day or two you’ll plum fergit about ever feelin’ puny or tired. Jest keep lookin’ t’wards home.”

But the event seemed to recede. Summer’s golden glory paled before autumn’s riper loveliness, and the air grew pungent with harvest fragrance that made Mis’ Lomux’s heart sick with longing. Polly noticed that her friend was losing ground daily, but there was no help for her at the mills, and Mary would not hear of returning to the fallow farm before the growing season began.

“I jest couldn’t bear to let the chilluns go to the poor farm,” she said yearningly. “Folks’d always have that to throw up to ’em when they growed up. An’ there’s them Lomuxes! They’d talk wuss’n anybody.”

During the late autumn one of the boys met with an accident which kept Mary from work for several days and drained her slender savings to the last nickle. Then winter came with its chill continuous rains, when the mills, always dull and somber, grew doubly gloomy. Doors and windows were kept closed and the prisoned air grew more and more poisonous as the workers exhaled it over and over. Mary protected her boys as well as possible. She had made herself so well-liked by her fellow-workers that no one interfered with her many little devices for the children’s comfort and no one manifested the ill-will which is so generally exhibited towards favorites; for it was impossible to be harsh toward the brave little woman who fought so desperately against losing odds. Toward spring Mis’ Lomux was obliged occasionally to take a day off on account of blinding headaches.

“’Tain’t nothin’ at all,” she invariably protested, in answer to Polly’s anxious questions. “Folks that’s had the fever ginerally feel this way every year about the same time. When the weather gits warmer I’ll be stout as ever.”

But Polly knew better. She had seen that look of deadly weariness too often to be deceived.

“Ain’t you never heard from Tobe?” Polly asked one evening when she sat on the steps of Mary’s shack watching her friend’s strenuous attempts to hold herself erect while she patched a pair of faded little trousers.

Mary bowed her head very low as she answered, “No.”

“Where’s he at?”

“In Atlanta, workin’ in the engine shops, an’ doin’ well; his maw told Billy Sanders a while back.”

“An’ he knows you’re down here slavin’ like a nigger for all them chillun?”

“I reckon he does, ’cause his maw writes to him.”

“Then all I’ve got to say is that he must be a turrible no-count feller to let his wife—”

“’Tain’t his fault,” Mary flung back, lifting her deathly pale face for a moment. “It’s them Lomuxes that made all the trouble to start with. If his maw hadn’t found fault with the chillun he never would a’ done what he did.”

“If you knowed that, what made you send him off?” Polly wanted to know.

“I jest couldn’t stand the thought of Tom bein’ teched by nobody. None of them chillun ever had a hand laid onto ’em afore, an’ I couldn’t bear that they should—ever!”

“Well, ’tain’t none of my business, of course,” said Polly drily, “but I will say that if Tobe was half a man even, he’d do his part now that you need him so bad.”

“He couldn’t—not after what I said,” Mary protested mournfully. “I told him never to come back no more till Kingdom-come, an’ he said he wouldn’t—not if I begged him on my dyin’ bed!”

“My land, what a mean sperited feller he must be!” Polly exclaimed contemptuously. “I wonder the Lord didn’t punish him for sech talk. In my opinion, Mary, you’re a heap better off without him than you’d be with him.”

Mary’s head drooped very low over her work, but in spite of that Polly saw the tears that fell on the little patched garments. There was a long silence during which Polly hated Tobe Lomux as heartily as she pitied Mary. Then she delivered herself of a bit of advice that had burned within her heart for weeks. “If I was you, Mary, I’d give up an’ let the county take care of me—jest for a little spell. You ain’t able to work another day, an’ to tell you the truth I don’t believe you’ll be let work much longer, ’cause the boss has noticed how bad you look. I’ll git the circuit-rider to speak a good word for you at the poor farm so’s they’ll give you a little shack off to yourself.”

“Oh Polly, I couldn’t go—I couldn’t!” Mary cried chokingly. “For myself it wouldn’t matter what come, but the chillun—they would always be looked down on fer livin’ at a poor farm.”

“What’s to become of ’em if anything bad was to happen to you, I’d like to know?” asked practical Polly. “You’ve done for ’em an’ humored ’em till they’re sorter spoiled. They couldn’t git along with strangers. The poor farm’s the only thing, Mary. I don’t doubt but that you’ll be stout enough by next spring to go back to the farm an’ make a crop, but you won’t if you stay here.”

“I’ll rest up a bit,” said Mary dejectedly. “We can git along on what the boys makes for a few days an’ by that time I’ll be stout enough to go back to work.”

But in that surmise Mary was mistaken. On the fourth day when she resumed her place at the reels, outraged nature succumbed completely to the long strain, and she dropped in a dead faint among her whirling spools. That happened the day before Polly was to go on a long advertised excursion to Atlanta, and, although Mary was quite ill on the eventful morning, Polly did not offer to stay with her friend but hurried through her gala preparations in great excitement. She looked thinner and paler and smaller than ever in her unaccustomed finery.

“I’ll fetch you a little somethin’ from Atlanta, if I git time to go to the stores,” Polly promised, while she waited on Mary’s porch for the hack to gather up its fluttering load along Factory Row.

Polly left the crowded train at Atlanta and hurried off in search of the engine shops. She had little difficulty in locating Tobe Lomux, whose industry had made him quite a favorite there. He was a sturdy, well-built young fellow with a good, honest face and a firm undimpled chin that bespoke a will of iron. He looked at little frail, anxious Polly as if she were something too insignificant for serious notice.

“I’m a friend of Mary Lomux’s,” Polly began with a furiously beating heart, for her hopes had dwindled discouragingly during her long, worried ride, “an’ I’ve come to find out if you aim to leave her die without doin’ a thing to prevent it.”

“Mary—die!” Tobe’s head went back with a wrench that sent the blood bounding to his face. “What’s that about Mary?” he asked gruffly.

“Don’t you know that she’s killin’ herself at the cotton mills down at Gainesville, workin’ for them chillun? Ain’t nobody wrote an’ told you that, Tobe Lomux?”

Tobe ignored the question. “Did Mary send you to me?” he asked in a voice that Polly misinterpreted.

“No, she didn’t. She’s got too much grit for that even if she is too sick to hold up her head. I didn’t have much hopes of gittin’ any satisfaction from you, judgin’ by the way you’ve acted, but I thought I’d try jest onct. What I want to know, Tobe Lomux, is if you’re goin’ to let her die—or not?”

“Me! Why, good Lord, what can I do? If Mary wanted me I’d—I’d—Well, she don’t, that’s all.”

“Mary didn’t send for you,” Polly broke in eagerly, “but if you’re any sort of a man you’ll drop that spike an’ take the fust train to Gainesville. That’s what you’d do, if——”

The tool dropped from Tobe’s grimy hand, and his head and shoulders went back defiantly. “I’m goin’ right back along with you,” he said, jerking off his leather apron and shaking down his sleeves. “Wait till I draw my pay. We can talk on the train.”

Polly remembered that homeward ride to her dying day, for it was the first time in her defrauded life that she had been brought face to face with a great passion whose very crudeness added to its strength. Tobe had held himself with grim, fearful ardor to his labor, while his stubborn aching heart yearned for one word of reconciliation from Mary. His mother had written strange, slighting things relating to the blighting factory life that Tobe abhorred, and he had waited and Mary had suffered in silence. Before the train reached Gainesville Tobe’s busy brain had evolved a plan which he confided to Polly while they stood on the station platform waiting for the country stage which was to take Tobe up to Lumpkin that very afternoon.

“I’ll be down by noon tomorrer, sure,” was his parting promise.

Polly paid a brief visit to Mary’s shack when she reached Factory Row, fearing to stay long lest her secret should escape her eager lips. She was tired, she explained so tersely that the sick girl felt hurt and neglected. The following day Polly appeared at sunrise.

“I don’t aim to work today,” she announced, “so I may as well set with you, Mary. You jest lemme fix you up on the porch where you can git the air while I red up the house a bit.”

Mary was too listless to object, so she dragged herself out to the narrow porch where the warm spring sunshine drenched the rough boards with a golden flood, upon which the blossomed torches of the cypress vine made small, dancing shadows.

“Ain’t it a turrible pretty day!” Polly exclaimed glowingly. “Makes me think of way up in Lumpkin, don’t it you?”

“I jest can’t bear to think of it at all!” Mary wailed, with a yearning glance toward the far, golden hills.

“I’ll bet the honeysuckles is jest thick all over them river hills by now. Don’t you rec’lect how blue the bottoms looked along about this time when the dog vi’lets is out full?”

“It’s time to lay off the cotton fields,” Mary murmured. “Polly, if anything should happen to me, you’ll see that the chillun keeps together at the poor farm, won’t you?”

“Shucks, you’re goin’ to get well—that’s what’s goin’ to happen to you, Mary Lomux. Now lie still and rest while I straighten up the house.”

Mary lay quite still for a long, long while, looking toward home with a great wistfulness in her weary eyes and a dark fear in her heart. By and by a wagon turned across the bare, sun-baked flat that separated Mary’s shack from the factory grounds and stopped at the head of Factory Row. It was spotlessly new, even to the snowy bow-sheet, and the household furnishings visible through the shirred opening were new, also. Mary saw the driver spring down lightly and throw the reins over a broken gatepost. Then Tobe stumbled up the steps, dully ashamed of his unconquerable emotion, for he came of a race who count it unmanly to betray any outward sign of feeling. But it was impossible for him to speak calmly.

“I didn’t have no idee you was sick, Mary,” said he shakingly. “I’m real glad Polly come an’ told me about it. I thought I’d drop in an’ see how you’s comin’ on, jest to be neighborly,” he added in a voice that seemed to come from a great distance.

Mary struggled up with a smothered cry, but fell back weakly among the pillows and cried instead of answering, while Polly stared helpless from the doorway and Tobe wrestled with his heart’s desire to take the poor little woman in his arms and comfort her in love’s own way. And while they waited a thin little voice came from the pillows.

“I ain’t a bit sick,” it said, “jest that flustered I can’t help but cry. Don’t mind me—Tobe. I’m real—glad to see you.”

“Mary,” Tobe rose from the chair into which he had dropped and stooped over the little trembling figure until his big, firm, strong hands rested on her shoulders. “Mary, do you reckon you could make out to go on up to Lumpkin with me? I’d love, the best kind to raise a crop this year.”

A cry of inarticulate joy struggled up from the pillows and after a moment a little tear-wet, lovely radiant face looked up at Tobe. “Do you mean—Oh, Tobe, would you take the chillun too?” Mary faltered.

“Sure thing, an’ be only too glad. Land, how I’ve missed them young ’uns!” cried Tobe, every fiber of his being aglow.

Mary’s joy brimmed over. “Oh Polly, did you hear that!” she called in sheer ecstacy. “I couldn’t be happier—no, not if I was in heaven.”

The young man lifted his head and looked straight at Polly with wet, shining eyes. “Say, you’ve got to go long with us,” he said unsteadily, “’cause I ain’t goin’ to leave Mary do a lick of work till she gits plum strong agin, no matter what comes. Git ready, will you, Polly?”

“Me! My land, how pleased I’d be. Why, it’d be like gittin’ to heaven—mighty nigh,” said Polly growing hot and cold by turns. “Now that the boys is both goin’ down to live with pa, too. Seem like things is turnin’ out too good to be true.”

“Don’t it! Tobe, can we go soon?” Mary asked breathlessly.

“Soon as you’n Polly can fix what you want to take along,” Tobe answered eagerly. “I’ll go over an’ fetch the chillun from the factory while you all git ready. We’d oughter git home by dark.”

Then he rose and strode buoyantly across the sun-baked hill to the factory door and Mary rose, too, tremblingly, but without hesitation, while Polly held herself in readiness to support her frail figure should her strength desert her. But there was no further need of anxiety, for Mary had tasted the elixir of life during that brief, transfiguring hour when love had put to rout the dreariness of hope deferred and filled her heart with joy unspeakable.