Weekly Jeffersonian., 1907-01-24
WATsoN's GREAT SPEECH.
CONTINUED from page So

OF raw COLtOH WOuIu advance DIS the
demand increased. That is the only
natural and permanent way to get bet
ter prices for cotton. Why talk such
childish nonsense as that spinners are
going to voluntarily give you a bet
ter price for your cotton this year,
or that temporary circumstances
might arise by which some such sort
of arrangement might be made? You
don't want a higher price of cent
or two to be doed out to you as the
gift of the cotton spinners. You don't
want any other class to give you any
thing. What you want is your rights
under the law; what you want is just
treatment under the law; what you
want is a square deal under the law,
and if you will go after the matter
right, you will get an advance in the
price of cotton, not as the gift from
the cotton spinner, but as a result of
unwritten, but irresistible laws which
he can no more disregard than you
can. Now, of course, when you lower
the tariff the manufacturer will not
make profit of 28 per cent upon $10,-
000,000,000. But he has no right to
have laws so framed as to take your
property for his benefit in order that
he may earn such unnatural and un-
just profits. Why, in the year 1900,
the manufacturers could have taken
out of their net profits for that one
year a sufficient amount of money to
have paid off the national debt, to
have dug the Panama canal at it's es-
timated cost, to have run railroad
from ocean to ocean, and then would
have left to themselves net profit
of more than any ordinary, unprO-
tected, unprivileged man made upon
his money. Such a situation is just
simply intOlerable, and if you don't
fight it to the death, you are untrue
to yourself, to your wives and your
children, to you country and your God,
and future generations bound down
to a hopeless serfdom, chained ever
more to a heartless plutocracy, will
curse your memory for the towards
that you were.
Let no man believe that l am oppos-
ed to banks as such-for l am not.
They are useful. They multiply the
capital of the country and therefore
they multiply the number of industries
and enterprises. Let no man suppose
me narrow and bigoted enough to op-
pose railroads. | do not. To the full
as factors in the developing of every
material interest of the country agri-
culture, mining, manufacture. Let no
one suppose for a moment that I am
opposed to manufacturing or to min
ing profits I am not. To the fullest
extent | realize the Importance of pro-
ducing in this country everything
that is necessary to our comfort, and
which the law of nature seems to say
that God Almighty intended that We
should produce here. The point I
make, is this: in our great American
family Uncle Sam has had too much
favoritism He has gutted every
other interest at the expense and at
the sacrifice of the most important in
terest of all, the agricultural interest.
l do not clamor for a sweeping away
of all profits in banking, but do con-
tend as Jefferson and Jackson and
Benton and Calhoun did, that the gov
ernment should take back to itself
the sovereign power of issuing money;
that the banks should be confined to
legitimate banking discounts, eX-
change, loans, etc-and that their
profits should bear some reasonable
proportion to the actual investment of
money
AS to the railroads, I consider, like
wise, that as long as the government
stupidity allows private corporations
tO aynIOit nuh1ic franchises and nub-