The Hattiesburg news. (Hattiesburg, Miss.) 1908-1917, 1914-07-01

urged Congress to stay in session and |
carry out the Democratic program, In
accordance with President Wilson's
address to the Virginia editors, Sena-
tor John Sharp Williams had inserted
in the record letter he wrote in an
swer to a telegram from constituent
who urged him to use his influence to
have Congress adjourn and go home.
The name of the man to whom the
letter was addressed was not given,
Senator Williams explaining that he
is Every modest sort of a man and
might object to his name being brought
into public notoriety in that way" The
letter is dated, however, June II, just
few days before President Wilson
made his noted address to the editors,
and is as follows:
My Dear Sir: Your telegram was
received. The whole country is being
flooded by certain financial interests
and by certain plutocratic industrial
concerns with blank forms of night
lettergrams or letters being sent to
people everywhere asking them either
to sign and send them to their Sena-
tors and Representatives or to send
letters or kilograms drawn up by them
selves. Senators and Representatives
are to be thereby persuaded to adjourn
Congress and go home on the ground
that the country and business are
suffering by surfeit of legislation or,
as they would perhaps call it, with in
dustrial dyspepsia.
The motives of the men who are
carrying on this propaganda-the Sim
mons Hardware Co. and many others,
amongst others some banking firms
in New York City-are obvious. Not
only are they obvious, but obviously
ndemocratic-plainly and palpably
plutocratic. Like movements started
with a series of predictions" of dire
disaster" II we dared to revise the
tariff. We revised 1t; no disaster fol-
lowed. On the contrary, the whole
country came to the opinion that we
had used our power very conservative
ly, and If there were any quarreling
with what we had done at all 1t was
by Democrats who said we had not
cut the tariff robbery deep enough.
Then these same great interests,
though evidently not always the same
men speaking for them, but through
kindred organizations, while the bank
ing and currency bill was under con-
sideration said that the proposed meas
ure was Revolutionary" that 1t would
bring on a panic" that it was hold
ing the country in a state of depres-
sion," etc. The truth is that the coun-
try was not in state of depression
We had the courage to pass the bill
anyhow. Within less than a week
afterwards some of them, and within
less than two weeks afterwards nearly
all of them, were singing paens of
praise of the bill, and everybody was
confessing that we had inaugurated an
infinitely better financial system than
the United States ever previously had.
Now, when we come to the trust
question and want to pass supplement-
al legislation concerning it, the same
influences are engaged in the same
struggle-predicting disaster Tor rath-
err under the guise of prediction, they
are threatening disaster)-and some OF
them now would bring on panic If
they thought they could fright
en- the Democratic Party from its pro-
gram of reform legislation.
With all their other charges they
are constantly talking about "politi-
clans interfering with business" Now,
no man has more objection to the ordi-
nary politician in the sense of being
the manipulators of conventions and
primaries and mere office seekers and
nothing more than l have. But Sena-
tors and Representatives taken by and
large, are fair samples of their people.
They are, moreover the choice of
their people, and if they are poor
lot" then the people who selected
them are responsible for selecting a
poor lot, and must have been a poor
lot themselves or they would not have
done it. A slur at the Senate and
House, therefore, is slur at the peo-
pie who sent them here, because even
Senators now are eligible for election
by the people; and even before the
law was passed making them eligible,
they were practically so, for all the
Southern and most of the Western
States had primaries for their selec-
ion-voluntary primaries, indepen-
iently of the laW-Or else primaries