Dyson, Wilkes Co. Ga.
Hon. Thomas E. Watson, New York.
Dear Sir: Will you please tell me in your Magazine the principal object you had in leaving the Democratic party and going into the People’s party?
Have the Republican or Democratic parties ever advocated the Government ownership of public utilities? If so, which one and when? Has that question ever been agitated in Europe? When and who by?
Truly yours,
⸺ ⸺.
ANSWER
My election to Congress was due to my support of the Ocala Platform of the Farmer’s Alliance, and when the Indianapolis Convention of 1891 instructed all Congressmen so elected to stand by the principles of the Alliance regardless of the Caucus dictation of political parties, I declined to enter the Democratic Congressional Caucus in Washington.
(1) I was immediately denounced in the bitterest terms by nearly every Democratic paper in Georgia; yet I could not have done otherwise without betraying the Alliance-men who had elected me.