Americus times-recorder. [volume] (Americus, Ga.) 1891-current, 1907-01-24


Watson said that the roadbeds are
permitted to run down, the des rot
under the rails and are not replaced.
locomotives which should be in the
shop are running on the rails, men
are worked overtime until engineer
or train dispatcher, exhausted beyond
the point of endurance, fall asleep
at their posts, and people are ruth
lessly slaughtered. This system has
been pursued to the point where they
kill their own president in the effort
to make larger dividends.
The speaker declared that the great
American family consisted of four
brothers-the farmer. the banker, the
railroader and the manufacturer-and
that the three big brothers should
see that their little brother, the farm
er, got a square deal, and if they
don't do it, he should make them do
it.
Mr.. Watson then contrasted the
time when the south was the home of
happy, God-fearing, prosperous
peolde, and that although slavery
existed, those were the best slaves
and received the best treatment
known in the history of mankind. He
contrasted another slavery which he
declared existed in this day and time,
but far worse. The negro slave,
when young, was not forced to work,
the sick We're tenderly taken care of,
and old age protected; but the white
child slave Of today IS made to work,
the sick are neglected and left to
die, finding rest at last in a potter's
field.
Here the speaker drew with that
power of imagary which he is the
master picture of the old southern
home There were tears in many
eyes when he concluded this. Mr..
Watson next addressed himself direct
ly TO the Farmers Union He urged
that body to emulate the example of
the banker, the railroad magnate,
and the manufacturer, permitting
none to enter save his own kind.
Mr.. Watson declared that there had
not been and was no overprOduciion
Of cotton Lower the tariff he
said. and go abroad with your cot
ton and sell the foreigner and let him
come here and sell his goods to you
Mr.. Watson ridiculed the idea that
the conditions which prevail could be
cured by anti-bucket shop legislation,
which, he declared, was the remedy
which Harvie Jordan had for all the
ills of the country.
Mr.. Watson advised the farmers
to go slow on immigration He de-
clared that he preferred to see the
fields of the south grow up in field
pine rather than see it Overrun with
hOrdes of foreigners, representing the
vice. crime and poverty of southern
Europe. He expressed himself as
favoring the importation of Germans
and Swedes of the better class. but
advised that rigid measures be adopt
ed to prevent the wealth hating, law
despising classes Of southern Europe.
He declared that the negro was here
to stay, and that the solution OF the
negro question lay in the enforce
ment of the vagrancy law against the
white as well as the negro vagabond =,
and that the laws OF the land should
be impartially administered between
blacks and whites alike.
I'D give the negroes, " said Mr..
Watson, absolutely every legal pro-
lection and right to which they are
entitled, holding for myself all che
political privileges and all the politi-
cal power. Ninety per cent of the
negro race woud be satisfied with this
order of things. and 10 per cent
would be dissatisfied with it. OF that
10 per cent, per cent would be Af-
ro-Americans. +"