Your article in the January issue of your Magazine in regard to the high-handed methods of the U. S. Steal trust in obtaining property from defenceless people has been read with much interest, and I approve of your bold and fearless manner in attacking unlawful corporations and lawless promoters.
That part in your article on the Steal trust where you raise the point as to whether the men who demolished the widow’s home were union men or not was noted in particular and I venture the opinion that they were not, because Pittsburg, with all its much vaunted prosperity is and has been recognized by union workmen as the cradle from which that disreputable class of workmen known as scabs have come. Pittsburg harbors more scabs than any other city in the country, regardless of size. The man who made the Steal trust possible operated his mills at Homestead with scabs at the sacrifice of human life and forced a lower scale of wages upon the men with the state militia. Yet this man is regarded by a great many so-called respectable people as a philanthropist because he is erecting monuments to himself in the form of libraries in different parts of the country.
M. G. Carlton, Zolfo, Fla.
I appreciate the Magazine and feel that it is one of the best. I am a Populist and took great pleasure in casting my vote for you at the last election, knowing at the time that the chances for success were bad. Yet I cast the vote with as great pride and satisfaction as if I had known you would be elected. I know how to sympathize with a defeated candidate as I myself ran on the Populist ticket for Representative against the noted Zuba King—the wealthiest man in De Soto County and one connected with one or more of the best banks of the country, and got beaten, of course, but I was not whipped but beaten by the money crowd and I believe as strongly in the principles of the Populist Party as I ever did. I am just the same today.
W. Scott Samuel, Pawhuska, Okla.
Thinking that Tom Watson’s Magazine might like to hear from a locality where politics “rules the court, the camp, the grove,” I relate this little incident. A few weeks ago, when the town sites of the Osage reservation were to be opened for sale and an auctioneer appointed to sell the lots, the news was published that a certain man, Amos Ewing, had received the appointment of auctioneer. Now, the reputation of this man, Ewing, is a stench in the nostrils of every honest man in Oklahoma. From petty defalcations to embezzlement of trust funds, which he was forced to disgorge, comes the reputation of the versatile and oleaginous Amos. And so, when it was known that our great “square deal” bear hunter had through his secretary named Amos for this promotion of trust and emolument, it was not long before the mails were loaded with protests from different localities in Oklahoma where the seductive Amos had exercised his peculiar grafts. Did it do any good? Alas for the square deal! When the sale of lots commenced at Pawhuska this creature, Ewing was in the position that should have been filled by some one at least not a self-convicted grafter, and he’s there yet, and all the protests, charges, etc., filed against him are as though they never happened. How’s that for the “square deal”?
In conclusion, permit me to compliment Tom Watson’s Magazine for its fearless exposé of moral rottenness in high places. Hoping the good work will go on, I desire to share in the glory of the time when its principles shall prevail.