The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-07-15
JOE BROWN MAKES
 4 RINGING SPEECH
Traces Business Paralysis to
 Too Much Agitation
THE GEORGIA SITUATION
The Policy of Georgia's New Adminis- tration Will Be To Encourage Cap- tai and Not Throttle It.
 Some Plain Facts.

In notifying Joseph M Brown of his
 nomination for governor of Georgia, at
 his home in Marietta last Saturday, Chair
 man J. R. Smith of the notification com
 rnlttee expressed his views on public aues- tions. The Augusta Chronicles cores
 pondent reports the speeches of MT. Smith
 and MT. Brown delivered on that oc-
 casion.
 The chairman declared what he thought
 the policy of the state should be towards
 public utility corporations, the convict question and other subjects, stating that
 he was confident the governor-elect would administer these affairs to the best of his ability and in the best accord with his | conscience
 In accepting the nomination for gov ernor Hon. Joseph M. Brown reaffirmed those principles for which he stood during the campaign which recently closed He gave his pledge that 1t will be his purpose | co build up and not tear down; to de- velop rather than agitate; that the office will not be used as stepping stone to higher honors, but for the sole execution of the peoples wlll. He spoke in advocacy Of reform where such is needed, but de- clared that it should be the policy of gov ernment to go after the individual violator
 Of law rather than injure investors by crusades on capital or property. p MT. Browns speech follows:
 MT. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Notification Committee-I have heard with emotions of profound gratitude your off cial announcement of the extraordinary honor which the white voters of our greas and beloved state have so generously ten dered me. With the heartfelt prayer that
 God will sustain and guide me. l accept It.
 And in thus accepting 1t I deem It entirely proper that I should make the following declarations:
 Scarcely one year ago our state stood on the pinnacle of unparalleled prosperity.
 Capital was receiving its greatest divi- dends. labor its highest wages and the products of the farm, quarry and mine averaging prices topped with gain.
 Yet, even at the period a cloud was gathering up the sky of Georgia's peace. And, quickly following a change of ad- minstration. the stormburst came.
 Tt Is not needful that we recite the details. The fact stands that the saw mill shut down, the factory curtailed It's output, the jobbing house withdrew It's salesmen, the farmer found the price or his products reduced, the developer re- trained from building the trolley line or the railroad. the laboring man ere many
 weeks was out of a job.
 AgtatlonI Agitationl
 What was the cause of this paralysis of business? Agitation. Agitation which denounced the corporation, but ignored the fact that the corporate was but the union of individual citizens who, singly,
 were too weak to accomplish the pur
 poses of development which with aggre-
 gated capital could build and was building
 up the state, giving, co-ordinately, en-
 ployment to thousands of the worthiest of our fellow citizens. This agitation seemed
 to take no account of the fact that the interests of capital and labor are insepar- ably interwoven, that the blue thread of the one cannot be withdrawn from the cloth without hopelessly weakening the texture of the red thread of the other. It ignored the fact that the reduction of
 
 which this states authorities made pr brought about lii the incomes, or tolls, received by the owners of certain corpor- ations went into the pockets of limited number of the classes, and that the cou- sumers, for whom these reductions in | tolls were Intended, received absolutely | not penny Of the amount of the reduc- | tons. It boldly declared that 5 per cent | net was a far return for those of our l fellow citizens who invested their money | in stocks of common carrier corporations, i, but granted to those who owned stock 1 in other corporations the right to earn !, from 20 to 100 per cei.t net 1t mani l festly took no account of the fact that | if the officers of pubhc utility corpora | tions were handling the affairs of those | corporations in such manner as was detri- | mental to the public interest, the just method of correcting such abuses was to l deal with such officers, but not to inflict l penalty, through serious ourtailment of income on their investment, upon innocent stockholders of properties which pay one | eighth of the taxes of Georgia; and so | the really pathetic feature of the catas- trophe lay in the fact that while the blow was blindly aimed at the dome of 1 the corporation IL struck in the cottages | of the minority stockholders and en- | ployes of the corporations while it was intended to lessen the profits of one species of corpoI ations 1t crippled the | stockholders and either seriously reduced
 or swept away the wages of the employees of all corporations and curtailed the coni-
 forts of life in every household in the | state.
 Not By Design.
 | q do not charge that this result was the design of the agitators. Yet, the