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

April, 1906

[Frontispiece]	W. Gordon Nye
Editorials	Thomas E. Watson	[161]
Sam Spencer—The Ungrateful Negro—An Indignant Wisconsin Editor—The Man and The Land—Random Comment
Machine Rule and Its Termination	George H. Shibley	[193]
A Basket and a Fortune	Louise Forsslund	[201]
Control or Ownership	Charles Q. De France	[209]
The Sacrifice	Jack B. Norman	[212]
Our Civilization	Count Lyof Tolstoy	[218]
A Coal Miner’s Story	Charles S. Moody, M. D.	[219]
The Pessimist; His View-Point		[227]
Those That Are Joined Together	Charles Fort	[228]
The Money Power	L. H. B.	[240]
The Russian Apostle of Populism	Thomas C. Hutton	[241]
Lucianna’s Keep	Elliot Walker	[244]
Who Pays the Taxes?	William H. Tilton	[253]
Letters from the People		[258]
Educational Department	Thomas E. Watson	[275]
Home	Louise H. Miller	[277]
Books	Thomas E. Watson	[290]
The Easter Hope	Cora A. Matson Dolson	[300]
The Say of Other Editors		[301]
News Record		[306]
Along the Firing Line	Circulation Manager	[318]

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

The Mockers of the Law and Despoilers of the People Have in Their Pay Vast Numbers to Vent Spleen and Venom on the Man that Dares to Speak Truth.

Watson’s Magazine

Vol. IV APRIL, 1906 No. 2

Editorials
BY THOMAS E. WATSON

Sam Spencer

Not long ago the Voting Trustees of the Southern Railway Company wrote to Samuel Spencer, President of that robber combine, in the following terms:

“We congratulate you upon the success achieved in the extension and operation of the property which have resulted in nearly doubling the extent of its lines, trebling its gross earnings, and increasing its net earnings above fixed charges, over five hundred and twenty-five per cent. in the period of eleven years which have elapsed since its formation.”

Bully for Sam!

He set out to please the men who bought him, and he has done it.

The Wall Street rascals who grabbed up the railroads in the Southern States knew very well that they themselves could not do the work which was required for the success of their schemes. The Belmonts and the Morgans could not in person approach the editors, the politicians, the legislators and the federal judges.

Strategy requires that local men be used in the looting of any given state or section. One traitor inside the citadel is worth ten thousand soldiers on the outside, when the object is to take the citadel. To bribe somebody from within to open the gates is far more effective, vastly more to be desired, than to attempt to breach the walls or batter down the gates.

Consequently when Western states are to be plundered, the Wall Street corporations use Western men as their tools. Local Western corruptionists sell out to Wall Street, and do in Western states the dirty work of their Wall Street masters.

So in the South, the Wall Street robber-gangs do not operate in person; they act through Southern agents.

In pursuance of this subtle policy, the Wall Street corporations, who gobbled up the various lines which now compose the Southern Railway System, put at the head of it a Southern man, a Georgian, of the name of Samuel Spencer.

They chose wisely. They generally choose wisely. The expert workman does not better know how to select his tools than such men as Belmont, Morgan, Ryan, Rogers and Rockefeller know how to pick out the men who can do what Wall Street expects.

The Wall Street rascals had faith in Sam Spencer, and Sam has justified that confidence.

Never did any robber-chief have an abler lieutenant than Belmont, the Rothschild agent, has had in Sam.

The task to which they set him was hard. It demanded that he freeze his heart and stifle his conscience. It demanded that he shut out from his view of life every other purpose whatsoever, save the heaping up of dividends for a ravenous gang of Wall Street rascals.

To make his work seem good in the sight of the men who had bought him it was necessary that he combine railroads which the law said should not be combined, that he destroy competition where the law said it should live, that he charge excessive rates to shippers and passengers when the law said the rates should be reasonable.

He has done this in spite of the law, in spite of the people.

How?

“One traitor inside the citadel is worth ten thousand soldiers on the outside.”

Editors have been bribed into collusion or silence; politicians have been softened with boodle; lobbyists have been kept in clover; legislators have been duped or corrupted. Railroad Commissions have been seduced or defied, federal judges have been mellowed with favors, blandishments, indirect temptings which poor human nature can seldom resist.

Bully for Sam!

He is victorious all along the line. From Washington City he rules the South. In his native State of Georgia he is monarch of all he surveys. He made Terrell governor, and he means to make Howell governor. He controlled nearly all the daily papers, but he wanted another—so he had Jim English to cut the ground from under the feet of John Temple Graves and scoop the Atlanta News.

Hamp McWhorter is his hireling, and Hamp keeps the mechanism of corruption oiled. Hamp keeps the Legislature in pliant mood. Hamp jollies and greases the local politician. Hamp peddles the free passes. Hamp picks and chooses the “local attorneys.” Hamp “sees” the editor who appears to require “seeing.”

But the Brain and Will of the whole plot are those of Sam Spencer.

For eleven years that God-given brain and will have been concentrated upon one purpose, only one—to heap up riches for Wall Street rascals! Great has been the result. Sam Spencer’s masters are so highly pleased with his work that they congratulate him!

How interesting! It seems to me that they are the fellows to be congratulated. Sam has doubled the amount of their property, he has trebled the gross income from that property, and has increased their net revenues over 525 per cent!

Colossal profits these. How were they made?

By such a system of dishonesty, extortion, law-breaking, and reckless disregard of human life as has rarely been known, even in the history of modern commercialism.

The merchants and farmers throughout the Southern States have been ruthlessly robbed. The melon growers, the fruit men, the truck gardeners have, in thousands of cases, been so hounded and harried and victimized by excessive charges, secret rebates and discriminations in favor of other shippers, that they have been literally driven out of the field, broken and despairing.

Roadbeds, bridges, safety appliances, have been so wantonly neglected that almost every mile of the Southern Railway System from Washington southward has known its tragedy, where men, women and children were dashed to sudden, horrible death.

It was not the hard necessity of poverty that drove Sam Spencer to a policy so heartless as this. He had the means wherewith to put his roads in first-class order, had he wished to spend the funds in that way. It was not necessary for him to rob the men who were obliged to patronize his roads. If a fair, legitimate profit upon actual investment was all that he sought, he could have got it without doing the slightest injustice to any human being.

But he wanted more than that. A reasonable return upon the actual investment was not enough. So, he neglected the bridge until it fell, with its sickening horror, its shrieking mass of passengers doomed to frightful death. He neglected the safety appliances, and the full force of workmen, until some rotten crosstie, or defective rail, or open switch, or telegram which the dulled brain of an overworked engineer failed to comprehend, brought about derailments and collisions, with the heartrending consequence of crushed and burning cars, of crushed and burning men, women and children.

“The merchants and farmers throughout the Southern states have been ruthlessly robbed.”

Had the same proportion of the earnings been used to improve the property, as is the universal custom in Europe, there would have been the same security to the passenger that there is in Europe.

But the net profit to Wall Street would have been only a fair return upon the money actually invested—as it is in Europe.

Wall Street demands more than that. Sam Spencer’s task was to get what Wall Street wanted.

Have I not already said that Wall Street knows how to pick out its man?

It never chose a better tool for its purpose than Sam Spencer.

He has doubled the amount of their property.

That is good.

But he has done better than that.

He has trebled the gross earnings.

And that is good, too.

But he has done still better than that.

He has increased the net earnings more than five hundred and twenty-five per cent!

Good, better, best.

That enormous profit had to be made out of somebody.

Freight rates and passenger rates are taxes which the transportation companies levy upon freight and passengers. When Sam Spencer added 525 per cent. to the net revenue of his masters, he had to tax it out of the people who patronized the Southern Railroad.

Who were these people? Mostly, Southern people. The tax was levied upon the South, and paid by the South.

Sam Spencer is a Southern man?

Bless you, yes!

Wall Street hired him to systematize the robbery of his own people, and he has done it.

“We lost fewer lives to the invading host of Sherman than we have lost to the railroads under Sam Spencer.”

During the eleven years of his rule he has plundered his own people of more money than they lost by Sherman’s “Marching through Georgia.”

The people of the South have lost more to the Wall Street railway corporations than they lost to the whole of Sherman’s army.

The battles of the Civil War were bloody, for it was Greek meet Greek, and it was, in truth, the tug of war. Especially were the battles bloody when Sherman came down against us, for he brought Western troops—the best that the Union had.

But we lost fewer lives to the invading host of Sherman than we have lost to the railroads during the eleven years that Sam Spencer has been one of their most relentless and unscrupulous lieutenants.

He and his allies in plunder and crime killed and wounded, last year, the staggering total of 92,000 human beings.

The ghastly record grows bloodier every year.

Human life is nothing; dividends are everything.

Five hundred and twenty-five per cent!

And Sam Spencer’s bosses pat him on the back and congratulate him.

Ah, yes; they were feeling good. They expanded. They bubbled over.

As who should say: “Sam, you are a trump. When we bought you, we believed we had bought a good thing; now we know it. You have been tried, and you have proven true. We set you to the task of plundering your own people, and you have not flinched from the job. You have skinned them to the queen’s taste. You have doubled our estate, trebled the earnings, and so squeezed the train-crews, the section hands, the roadbed, the shipper and the passenger, that you have swelled our profits more than 525 per cent. We congratulate you—and, we pocket the money.”

The Ungrateful Negro

From a Newspaper

THE AMERICAN FLAG INSULTED BY NEGRO BISHOP IN MACON.

DENOUNCED GLORIOUS EMBLEM AS A CONTEMPTIBLE RAG AT THE STATE NEGRO CONVENTION.

Macon, Ga., Feb. 16.—In an address before the five hundred delegates attending the convention of negroes in this city to discuss racial problems, Bishop H. M. Turner declared the American Flag to be a dirty and contemptible rag. He further said that hell was an improvement on the United States when the negro was involved.

In closing he said:

“I have heard of both white and black men perpetrating rape upon innocent, angelic women, but no negro in this country has been tried by the courts and found guilty of the heinous crime of rape in fifteen years.

“I know that bloody-handed and drunken mobs have said so, but what Christian people would accept what they say? Yet there are millions of men who pretend to be moral and claim to be sensible in this country, who go to these drunken mobs to get information relative to the conduct of colored men.”

How it came to pass is a question which human wisdom may not solve, but in the earliest dawn of history we find the races of men separated by color and by characteristics, very much as they are at this time.

In spite of all the comings and goings, the migrations and conquests, the discoveries and colonizations, the world is pretty nearly the same old world, so far as the distinct races of men are concerned. The Jew is still the Jew, the Gentile still the Gentile. All the currents of the ages have not washed the yellow man white, nor turned the red man yellow, nor the black man red. The hot sun of the tropics pours down upon the heads of the sons of men as fervidly as in the days of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but it has not been able to kink the hair, flatten the nose, blubber the lips or blacken the hide of a single man, woman or child of the Aryan race. The Chinaman, racially, is what he was in the time of Confucius; the Hindoo is yet the dark man whom Khrishna sought to lead to the higher life.

In Africa, the home of the negro, there has been a monotonous repetition of the same old facts which historians learned from monumental inscriptions and indestructible tablets thousands upon thousands of years old.

The African negro has always been a distinct type, an inferior type, a savage type, a non-progressive type. Left to himself, he wore no clothing, built no houses, had no commerce, systematized no production of any sort and never had the faintest conception of doing anything to improve himself or his condition. He killed for the day the game he needed for the day. For the future, he made as little provision as the Indian and the Esquimau.

Beyond the herding of cattle he had no instinct for accumulation. His normal state was that of warfare against some other black tribe. His religion was the grossest superstition. He offered up to his heathen gods the sacrifice of the negro child; and when his appetite for four-legged animals was sated, he changed his diet by cooking and eating another negro.

Where the sexual relations of the men and women were not promiscuous, they were polygamous. Strictly speaking, there was no such thing as morals known among them. Property rights which certain men had, or claimed, in certain women might be respected, but the conception of virtue was not reached.

They never evolved an alphabet. They never advanced beyond the crudest, rudest, most brutal tribe-life.

They had chiefs, or kings; and these kings exercised, despotically, the power of life and death over their ignorant subjects.

They had conjurers and witch doctors, and it was one of the time-honored customs that the witch doctors should “smell out,” for death, the wretched creatures whom the king wanted to kill, or whom the witch doctors themselves wished to put out of the way.

Thousands upon thousands of years ago, negro warriors sold their negro captives into slavery. Negro husbands would offer their wives and daughters to foreign travelers. Negro fathers would sell their children. In some of the oldest monumental inscriptions of the human race, the negro appears as the chained slave of foreign masters.

Anybody on earth who wanted to buy him could do it. His king was ready to sell him; his father was ready to sell him. The Egyptian, the Greek, the Roman owned black slaves as far back as the records go; and the historian Gibbon did no more than express the universal experience and opinion of the ages when he wrote that the negro was a distinctly inferior race.

“His normal state was that of warfare against some other black tribe.”

Of all the negroes that have ever lived Tchaka was the greatest. He ruled in Africa, in the eighteenth century.

He was a man of immense natural power. His ambition was boundless, his soul untroubled by fear or scruple. Absolute master of a strong tribe, he hurled it against other tribes, one after another, until he had conquered and devastated an imperial territory. In his march to dominion, it is estimated that he caused the slaughter of a million human beings, all of whom were his brothers in black. But he never built a city; never put a ship on the sea; never made two blades of grass grow where one had grown before. He founded no institutions of any kind. He was densely ignorant and superstitious himself, and he had no conception of anything higher or better.

To kill, to conquer, to feast, to indulge bestial lust, to inspire terror, to exploit and mercilessly abuse the abject servility of the negroes over whom he ruled were his “pleasures of living.”

It was believed that he caused the death of his own mother; it is known that when he buried her he buried fourteen young negro girls with her—buried them alive!

It is known that, during the “period of mourning” which followed, he caused the death of some thousands of maddened and helpless negroes. It is also known that his sisters got his brothers to assassinate him. Then one of these brothers murdered the other, and so became king of that happy land.

In Africa where the negro is still to be seen in his natural state, you can still buy negroes from negroes. Husbands will yet sell wives, fathers will yet barter daughters and sons. The buying and selling of negroes goes on now just as it did in the days of the Pharaohs. There is not so much of it as there used to be—to the regret, doubtless, of African chiefs who have negroes they would like to sell.

One of the San Domingo Nobility.

Not long ago there was a story which went the usual rounds. An English traveler was about to set out from a certain coast town of Africa upon a journey into the interior. He expected to be gone for several months. In fitting himself out with camp equipage, he bought a negro girl to carry along—to serve as his mistress. Her father sold her, and the only surprise that was caused by the transaction was the amount paid. The Englishman gave about one hundred dollars for the girl and it was generally considered an extravagant figure. As to the girl, she seemed proud to have been selected, and gratified at having been sold so high. When the Englishman had finished his trip, he probably sold her at a discount to some other white man who desired a complete camp outfit.

Excepting those portions of Africa wherein the white man has set his foot and impressed his will, the negro is at this day the same lustful, brutal, besotted cannibal and voodoo slave that he was thousands of years ago.

In Jamaica, the white man has to steer for him, and control him.

He did not even know what to do with bananas till Col. Baker, a white man, came along and taught him.

In Liberia, he has gone back to heathenism and savagery, because the white man’s strong hand is not there to guide and control.

In San Domingo, he had—as a starting point—one of the fairest civilizations the world has known. Aided by the yellow fever, the black man drove out the white; and now he has gone back into chaos, voodooism, cannibalism and imbecility.

In the United States, negroes can run a bank, for they can see white men running banks all around them and they are quick at imitation.

How is it in San Domingo, where the black man rules the white?

Apparently there is not a bank in San Domingo. If there is, it cannot be trusted. Why do I say this?

Because that portion of the San Domingan custom-house receipts which was to be paid to the creditors of the negro republic had to be deposited in a New York bank for safe-keeping.

In the United States, the negroes can run colleges, manufacturing establishments, automobile street-car lines, newspapers and magazines. Why? Because they see how the whites run colleges, manufactories, and automobiles, newspapers and magazines.

In San Domingo there is no Tuskeegee, Hampton or Howard. In San Domingo there are no flourishing manufactories created and operated by negroes; and no up-to-date automobile street-car lines, such as the negroes started in Nashville, Tennessee.

The negroes of San Domingo ought to have a commerce—one of the most profitable in the world; but they haven’t. Their navy is a myth, and their army a joke. One revolution chases after another with such confusing rapidity that when our Senate meets to debate the ratification of the San Domingan treaty which Roosevelt had arranged, the “President” with whom Roosevelt had made the treaty is a fugitive, whose “Cabinet” has compelled him to take to the woods.

There used to be an “Order of Nobility” in San Domingo, with its Marquis of Lemonade and its Duke of Marmalade; but as these eminent Noblemen have failed to show up in the later turmoils I fear their titles have become extinct, or that the “Order of Nobility” has been abolished.

Which is a pity. It would have been something worth living for to have seen the Duke of Marmalade paying a visit to this country, receiving the adoring attentions which New York’s “Swell Set” pay to all “noblemen” whomsoever.

Nowhere else in the universe is the negro treated so well as in the United States.

He was once a slave, but his own people sold him. Either he was a captive in war who would have been slain, broiled and eaten, if the English or Dutch sailor had not come along and offered to buy him; or he was in the power of his chief, his father or his brother, and was by them offered for a price.

Some of the blacks who were brought to this country may have been kidnapped, but, as a rule, there was no need for kidnapping. Negroes could be bought for a song all along the Coast and all through the interior of Africa. The most successful “kidnapper” was New England rum.

Yes, it is a literal historical fact that the negro was sold into slavery by his own people, just as Joseph was sold by his brethren.

In the long run what was the consequence to the negro?

He was changed from a savage into a semi-civilized man.

In his native land he had been an ignorant serf whose life depended upon the temper of a despotic brute—his chief.

He exchanged a slavery for a slavery; and the slavery to which he was brought lifted him from a brute into a man.

We taught him how to work; we taught him how to read; we taught him how to think; we taught him how to live.

To free him from the bondage into which his own brethren had sold him, a million white men rose in arms. There were four years of terrible, horrible strife; half a million white men fell in battle; six billions of dollars were devoured in the flames of Civil War; and over all that period of strife, and over the host which finally triumphed, waved the flag which the freed negro—freed at such frightful cost—now safely denounces as a dirty and contemptible rag!

When the “Brothers’ War” was over and while the former owner of the slaves was prostrate, those who had fought that the black man might be free, clothed him in the garments of citizenship, giving him the ballot, giving him office, giving him power, at the same time that tens of thousands of white men were outlawed.

“Show to the world that you are capable of government,” said the white philanthropist to the blacks; and the result was a hideous carnival of mismanagement, incompetency and gross rascality which at last made even the professional white philanthropist sick and ashamed.

Taking out of the hands of the blacks the political power which he had shown himself unfit to wield, the whites have ever since occupied toward him the attitude of a guardian over a ward, manifesting for him a helpful sympathy, aiding his advancement with substantial contributions, leading him upward and onward by precept, example and wholesome control.

Schools were established for him. Churches were built for him. White men and white women devoted their lives to lifting the black man, the black woman, the black child into the nobler, purer paths. White men taxed themselves to put an end to the negro’s ignorance and superstition. The white man opened his purse to endow colleges for the negro’s special benefit. The white man opened the door of opportunity to the black, and gave him a chance in every field of human endeavor.

“We taught him how to work; we taught him how to read; we taught him how to think; we taught him how to live.”

Not for one month could the negro prosper in the United States, if the white man became his enemy.

In one month, we could by concert of action, so smite the negro that his mushroom growth would wither like the severed gourd-vine. The maddest thing, the most suicidal thing that the black man could do would be to arouse the enmity of the whites.

When that day comes, if it shall ever come, the white man will not any more stop to count the cost of annihilating, or of driving out the blacks, than Spain halted to count the cost of smiting and driving out the Moor.

In the United States the negro is seen at his best, because of the constant example, guidance and control of the whites.

Nowhere else on the planet has the negro the religious establishment which he has copied from us, with our earnest help.

Nowhere else has he the educational system which he has patterned after ours, aided at every step by us.

Nowhere else has he the banks, manufactures, newspapers, magazines, modernized farms, elegant professional offices which he has fashioned upon our models, amid our plaudits of approval and encouragement.

By the hundreds, by the thousands, the negro has been admitted to positions of honor and trust. He has been in the Senate; he has been in the House of Representatives; he has been in the State Legislatures; he has served on juries; he is in the army; he is on the police force.

In the proud, aristocratic city of Charleston doth not the redoubtable Dr. Crum, a negro, sit at the Receipt of Customs, drawing a fatter salary than was ever enjoyed by Matthew, the Apostle of Christ?

“To free him from bondage half a million white men fell in battle.”

There are no Dr. Crums in Africa or Liberia. And in San Domingo it is the white man who sits at the receipt of customs—nobody being willing to trust the negro with his own money.

Hath not our Roosevelt declared that when Judson Lyons, Register of the Treasury, goes out, another negro shall take his place? Thus it shall continue to happen that Uncle Sam’s paper money will not be good in law until a negro has set his name to it.

Once upon a time, a white man, in the United States, gave a negro school a million dollars in a lump. Doctor Booker Washington got the money. I wonder how long the learned Doctor would have to live in Africa, Liberia, or San Domingo before he could get a million dollars with which to operate a school.

Really, it sometimes occurs to me that if such negroes as Bishop Turner are honest in their denunciations of the United States, they would pack up their belongings and go right back to dear old Africa, the home of the race. Nothing on earth prevents their doing so.

Rather than go to hell I would go to Africa; and if I believed I was living in a land which was worse than hell, I would even try San Domingo, for a change.

What bosh, nonsense and self-assertive insolence is embodied in Bishop Turner’s denunciation of the Flag and of the Government!

Poor, down-trodden negro!

What a doleful howl he sets up when he is asked to ride in a separate car; and when he is told that separate churches, separate schools, separate hotels, and separate social life is best for both races. How he raves and froths at the mouth when we tell him that for his own sake, as well as ours, we who have, with desperate difficulty and hardship and sacrifice, built up our civilization, cannot afford to allow it to fall into the power of the inferior race. We have seen what they did with this same Civilization in San Domingo when the French Revolution, most unwisely, entrusted it to the blacks.

Reconstruction days taught us that the San Domingan experience would be repeated here, if the negro rule continued. To save ourselves from such a calamity, and to save the negro from himself, we put back into the hands of the whites that civilization which had been the outcome of centuries of effort on the part of the whites.

And when the Negro Convention of today has not met to howl but to brag, what a beautiful, brilliant picture their orators can paint, as they proclaim the progress and prosperity of the negro. What wonderful statistics they use to prove that the negro has advanced in knowledge more rapidly than the whites of Russia, of Hungary, of Italy and of Spain! What a glittering array of accumulated millions do they claim, in lands, chattels and hereditaments! With what vociferous gusto do they “point with pride” to their farms, their stores, their banks, their newspapers, their magazines! To listen to them when they have assembled to jubilate instead of to howl, you would suppose that, so far as the negro was concerned, the horn of plenty was full, the land flowing with milk and honey. Even Bishop Turner, with an amazingly unconscious inconsistency, fills his letter of so-called denial with boastings of the handsome homes in which the negroes live, the furniture which the white man just ought to go and see, the “library” which would delight the scholar, the piano music and the organ melodies which, in negro homes, soothe the ear and charm the sense.

Let us admit that every bit of this bragging and boasting is founded upon solid fact. Then, in the name of common sense, let me inquire: “Where, oh, where, is the negro race doing all these marvelous things?”

In what country, under what flag, is he piling up these millions of money? Under what government is he outstripping the Russian, the Spaniard, the Austrian? Where is it that he has bought so many farms, established so many banks, built such fine houses, secured such attractive furniture, and gotten an organ for ’Liza Jane and a piano for Susan Ann?

Is it in Africa? No. In Liberia? No. In San Domingo? No.

The negro is doing the splendid things to which he “points with pride” in that country whose flag is a dirty rag, in that land which is worse than hell!

Poor, down-trodden negro!

He makes an idle wager in Baltimore that he will kiss a white girl, in a white hotel; and he walks up to her in the public dining room, puts his hands upon her and kisses her!

In Chicago, he sits down in a white restaurant, and beckons a white woman waitress to come and wait upon him; and when she refuses, he goes straight to a magistrate, swears out a warrant, has the girl arrested, and sends her to prison!

Poor down-trodden negro! In New York City, and perhaps in other cities, negro men hold white women in a state of slavery, to minister to their lusts; and the political power of these negroes is so great that the lawful authorities have been utterly unable to free these white slaves from the bestial degradation in which they are held by their black masters.

In Washington City—but that would require a chapter to itself. If there is a Paradise on this earth, a Garden of Eden filled with ceaseless joy for the non-producing, insolent, self-assertive blacks, it is our Capital City of Washington, where more than two thousand negro men and women draw Government pay in federal offices.

Oh, that Bishop Turner had described to the Macon Convention one of those “Receptions” at the mansion of Judson Lyons, Register of the Treasury—such as Judson often held. Oh, that the Bishop had told the Convention how many of Judson’s colored guests came in automobiles, which were left lining the sidewalk and obstructing the street. Oh, that the Bishop had described to the Convention the similarity between the negro “Reception” at the mansion of the Register of the Treasury and the white reception of the President of the United States!

“Poor down-trodden negro!... he is sometimes compelled to take dinner with John Wanamaker and lunch with Theodore Roosevelt.”

Poor, down-trodden negro! In this land which is worse than hell, it actually happens that he is sometimes compelled to take dinner with John Wanamaker, and to lunch with Theodore Roosevelt!

The amazement within me grows as I dwell upon the black man’s woes, and I marvel that Doctor Washington, Judson Lyons, Bishop Turner “and others among ’em” do not pack right up and go straight back to dear old Africa.

And to think that the man who declared this country to be worse than hell is a “negro preacher.” I had supposed that if there was any human being who found the United States an ideal abode, it was the “negro preacher.” He is the one incumbent whom I had been led to believe had a mighty rich thing in salary, and a still richer thing in “perqueesits.” If I had been asked to go out and find the man who could unreservedly indorse the proposition that life is worth living, I should have struck a bee line for the nearest negro preacher.

Of course, if I had been unable to find him, my next choice would have been the negro school-teacher.

The army of negro preachers is a shining host, waving palms of victory, and apparently happy; the army of negro school-teachers is another shining host, waving palms of victory, and apparently happy.

The white man’s money, directly and indirectly, supplies the sinews of war to both these shining hosts—a fact which it did not suit the purpose of Bishop Turner to mention in the convention which had met to howl, and which, consequently, was bound to howl.

In Africa, in Liberia, in San Domingo, negro preachers have not flourished, increased, or put their hands upon so many good things as they have done in poor, little, old North America. And the shining hosts of negro school-teachers, flush with the white man’s money, do not wave any palms of victory beyond the limits of the country which is worse than hell, the country whose flag is a dirty, contemptible rag “where the negro is involved.”

Take out of your pocket a five-dollar or one-dollar treasury note, or certificate, and look at the name signed to give it validity.

“Judson W. Lyons, Register of the Treasury.”

Do you find it?

Well, that name has been a legal necessity to every treasury note issued by the Federal Government during the last eight years.

Judson W. Lyons is a negro.

For the last eight years he has been holding the high, responsible and well-paid office of Register of the Treasury of the United States.

Nevertheless, this Judson W. Lyons went down to Macon, Georgia, to attend a convention of negroes, and in this convention he heard Bishop H. M. Turner, a negro, denounce the flag of his country as “a contemptible and dirty rag;” and Judson did not open his mouth to protest.

He also heard this ungrateful Bishop declare that—“Hell is an improvement on the United States when the negro is involved.”

Still, Judson W. Lyons sat there in apparent acquiescence—he an officer of the Government!

Now when you are told that every blessed son and son-in-law of Bishop H. M. Turner was appointed to office under President Cleveland, and when you bear in mind that Judson Lyons has so long been in the enjoyment of a Federal office which pays him $8,000 per year, you can form a fair idea of a radical defect in negro character. It is Ingratitude.

Bishop Turner has been treated with the utmost consideration by the whites. He enjoys a larger income than he could hope to draw as witch doctor in Africa, or as voodoo man in San Domingo. He lives on the fat of the land, grows juicy himself, and yet runs no risk of being hot-potted by hungry brethren—as he would in his native land of Africa. He dresses in a manner which would have stunned King Tchaka; and to see him take his ecclesiastical ease in a Pullman car is a sight for the sore-eyed.

What is the Bishop angry about?

Apparently for the reason that “drunken mobs” in the North, South, East and West diabolically persist in accusing the negro of committing rape.

The Bishop says that the negro is innocent. Being innocent, he is necessarily as innocent as a new-born babe. The Bishop declares that “no negro has been tried by the courts and found guilty of this crime of rape in fifteen years.”

This statement makes the other twin for Booker Washington’s assertion that “not more than six” graduates of negro colleges have ever gone wrong. A more precious pair of Siamese-twin lies have not been put in type since the decease of the late lamented Baron Munchausen.

My opinion is that Bishop Turner, if he continues to cultivate the evil spirit which broke loose in the Macon Convention, will some day know, by experience, whether hell IS an improvement over the United States; but, before that time comes, I would suggest that he step down to San Domingo and soak himself in the luxuries of that region for awhile, as a preparation for the other place.

“In New York a negro is at the head of the white slave traffic.”

Note.—Public opinion expressed itself so hotly concerning his attack on the flag that Bishop Turner felt driven into a perfunctory and involved denial; but having read this so-called denial I am convinced that the bishop did use substantially the words reported, because of the significant fact that his so-called denial contains language quite as offensive, quite as insulting, as that which he surlily pretends to disclaim. Had this been the first time that Bishop Turner had denounced the Government that has done so much for his race, had it been the first time he had outrageously vilified the people among whom he lives, there might be room for doubt concerning the Macon speech. But Bishop Turner has for years been speaking and writing in precisely the vein which appears in the reports that went out from Macon. He has become conspicuous as a chronic assailant of the whites. Therefore I have not the slightest doubt that he used at Macon in substance, if not in the very words, the reports as telegraphed all over the country.

An Indignant Wisconsin Editor

Mr. John L. Sturtevant, whose card informs the interested universe that he, the said John L., is editor of The Waupaca Post, of Waupaca, Wis., flew into a passion when he read the February number of this Magazine.

The why and the wherefore of his sudden rage are best explained in a red-hot letter which I now give in full, just as it came sizzling from the frying pan:

Feb. 17, 1906.

Thomas E. Watson, New York.

Dear Sir: In the February number of your magazine, on page 400, under the caption “Best on Earth” you state: “The big Milwaukee First National Bank burst and the people lost $1,450,000.” The statement is absolutely false. F. G. Bigelow, president of the bank, appropriated that amount from the bank’s funds to his own use, but the bank did not burst nor did the “people,” in the sense in which you use the word, lose one cent. The loss fell upon the stockholders and was fully paid from the surplus which the bank had accumulated during an honorable and successful career. Your magazine is full of just such reckless and libelous statements as this, which make thoughtful readers look with distrust upon the few truths it contains. Intentionally, or otherwise, you constantly do grave injury to many people and the pity of it is your readers who do not think or reason are led along the paths of populism, socialism and anarchy.

Sincerely yours,

J. L. Sturtevant.

Touching the falsehood to which the furious John L. refers, I have this to say: My article was based upon a “special” sent out from Chicago which went the rounds of the Press, and which was not contradicted.

The “special” from which I took the facts, appeared, on December 19, 1905, in the Augusta Herald, one of the most reliable and conservative Democratic daily papers in the United States.

The indignant Sturtevant does not deny that the bank was looted of the sum stated by me, but because I said that “the people” lost the money he charges me with having made a statement that was “absolutely false.” Sturtevant alleges that the money was not stolen from “the people” but from “the stockholders!”

He is equally indignant because I said that the bank “burst.” He alleges that the stockholders were able to stand the theft of nearly a million and a half dollars, and that the bank didn’t burst.

An Editor of a Magazine is at a disadvantage when compared to the Editor of The Waupaca Post, of Waupaca, Wisconsin. Sturtevant evidently stands at the head-waters of information, and gets his news fresh from the spring. That’s one of the luxuries of living and editing at Waupaca.

A poor devil of a Georgia editor, like me, has to take his information second-hand. In spite of all that I can do, it is impossible for me to be there, all over the world, when things are happening.

Sturtevant was close to Milwaukee when Bigelow looted his bank, and therefore, knew at first hand what the facts were. On the contrary, I was thousands of miles off, and had to rely upon telegraphic despatches, published in reputable newspapers.

In the “special” from Chicago which appeared in the Herald, of Augusta, Ga., December 19, 1905, this language appears:

“The three big bank wrecks which are still fresh in the public mind on account of their size and recent date are: the Enterprise National Bank of Allegheny, Penn.; The First National Bank of Topeka, Kans.; the First National Bank of Milwaukee, Wis.!”

Then in a tabulated statement, the “special” gave sums which were classified as “losses.”

In this separate list of “losses” occasioned by “the bank wrecks,” the First National Bank of Milwaukee, heads the table with $1,450,000.

Therefore, instead of my statement in the Magazine being reckless and false, it was carefully based upon a “special” sent out from Chicago in December, which at the time my paragraphs were written had gone unchallenged for more than a month.

Even when corrected by Mr. Sturtevant, how much good is done to the National Banking system whose claim to be “the best on earth” I was ridiculing? My point was that the lootings of this boasted “best system on earth” were so frequent and so colossal that it was absurd to claim that the system was “the best on earth.” How does the Waupaca Champion of looted banks improve matters by explaining that the president of the bank merely stole a million and a half from the stockholders?

How does he weaken my attack by saying that the bank was able to stand the huge robbery?

Is bank rottenness saved from denunciation because the looted bank happened to be rich enough to survive the blow?

Is bank gutting made respectable because the stockholders alone were gutted?

Suppose the stockholders had not been rich enough to make good the loss; suppose the bank had not possessed “a surplus” of that immense size—wouldn’t “the loss” have fallen upon “the people,” and wouldn’t the bank have “burst”?

Ah, Mr. Sturtevant! When you say that a National Bank has gained such tremendous profits out of the privilege of creating money and lending it to the people at high rates of interest that a robbery which runs up into the millions does not stagger it in the least, you simply convince the intelligent reader that National Banks reap far greater gains out of Special Privilege than their champions are in the habit of admitting.

As to the “other” reckless and libelous statements which the Waupaca Editor says I have been making in the Magazine, I can only invite him to name them.

The Magazine is here to stay, and it is not conscious of having made reckless and libelous statements.

The columns are open to brother Sturtevant, and to all others, who wish to challenge any statements made therein.

Whenever I am shown to be wrong, I will gladly make correction, and, if need be, apology.

If, on the contrary, the other fellow happens to be wrong, I will endeavor, in a mild, conciliatory but earnest spirit to show him his error.

Brother Sturtevant, of Waupaca, asserts that I am constantly doing grave injury to many people.

I appeal to Sturtevant to furnish me a list—a partial one, at least—of the people whom I am constantly injuring so gravely.

If he can establish the fact that in the 200,000 words or more, which I have written for the Magazine, a grave injury has been inflicted upon any man, woman or child, I stand ready to make the fullest amends.