Sometimes “patience ceases to be a virtue” and this is one of the times.

The Record has kept quiet on the subject of the disgraceful, indifferent, unwarranted and careless manner in which the Southern Railway has treated its patrons from Toccoa to Elberton, through fear of being classed as a chronic kicker.

But the thing has become so awful until this paper can keep still no longer.

Our business men here in Royston—and we suppose it’s the same way in Lavonia, Bowersville, Canon and Bowman—are losing money every day in the week through this giant corporation’s ill-treatment. Our cotton buyers have hundreds of bales of cotton stored here in every conceivable place because they can’t get cars to ship it away.

Our merchants have goods on the road which were shipped to them days, weeks and almost months ago, and are losing sales daily because they can’t get the goods delivered on time.

Sometimes there is no freight train to arrive here for two days at a time. Whose fault this is The Record doesn’t know, but it must be the “Big Guns” who own the road.

Not a freight train has arrived here on time in two months. Thousands of dollars have been lost to the merchants and farmers of this section through the criminal neglect of those who are at the head of this greedy octopus, better known as the Southern Railway, which has Georgia in its power as strongly as ever a boa constrictor of South Africa encircled its victim.

How long? Oh Lord! How long, will this thing last?

Hasn’t Georgia’s Railroad Commission some power to do something for the people of Georgia in this matter? If they haven’t they might as well close up shop and go home and try and find some calling more suitable to their respective talents, provided the members of that representative (?) body have any.

The depot agent at this place is as painstaking and gentlemanly as any railroad official in Georgia, but is helpless. He is worked to death for want of sufficient help. He is doing the work of two men.

From the section boss to the highest official on the line in question—the Elberton Air Line—that’s the road we’re talking about—the pay is less by one third than it should be and not half enough help is employed in any of the departments.

If the crew on the freight train that runs on this road were animals, we could indict the authorities for cruelty to animals, but as they are only human beings there is no law to cover the case. More’s the pity. There’s something wrong with the law when it allows a greedy corporation to work its men to death.

Why not put on two freight trains per day, having them to leave Elberton and Toccoa early in the morning and returning in the afternoon? The Record believes this would solve the problem and stop the congestion of freight on this line, at least.

The people of this section are broad minded and generous, and only want what is due them from any standpoint, but propose to get what is coming to them if it is gettable.

As we said in the beginning, we tried to keep still about this matter, but our hammer has begun to knock and we propose to keep it up until something is done.

The Record will begin, next week, to circulate a petition among our business men regarding this matter and proposes to send said petition to Vice-President Andrews, of the Southern, in Charlotte, N. C., to Mr. McMannus, in Greenville, S. C., and to the great and only Georgia Railroad Commission, in the city of Atlanta.

Will our sister cities along the Southern, from Toccoa to Elberton, do the same thing?

The Record will wait and see.—Royston (Ga.) Record.

Paid Dear for Their Titles.

The girls of these United States have always borne the name of being the most vivacious, intelligent and common sense mortals of any other nation, but as is the case in all other things, there are exceptions to the rule, and when they do depart from the record they can make the very worse breaks of any. Just think of as intelligent, cultivated girls as Anna Gould and Consuelo Vanderbilt allowing such broken down old foreign sports, gamblers and roues as Count Boni de Castellane and the Duke of Marlborough, persuading them that they were loved, not for their riches but themselves, and marrying such cattle when they could have secured good, honest, sober, loving husbands at home. One is now suing for divorce in Paris after her Frenchman has spent eight millions of her money, and the other is applying for a separation in London. If it was foreign titles these girls were seeking, they have paid dear for their little toy and really deserve no sympathy, but if they sought the men merely for their supposed merits, the two women ought to have guardians appointed over them for the remainder of their lives, for they have no idea of how to take care of themselves.—Gainesville (Fla.) Elevator.

Honesty and Honor.

Pope says that an honest man is the noblest work of God and Paul says to provide things honest in the sight of all men.

Webster says that honor is esteem due or paid to worth. Bacon says that some in their actions do woo, and affect honor and reputation.

In common parlance we call a man honest, if he pays his just and true debts. Is that true? If a person pays debts with money secured by extorting the widows and orphans, by pressing the poor, by selling hell and damnation to youths, is he to be called honest? Certainly not. He is neither honest nor honorable.

There is another class of folk, who think themselves honest and would resent with their strong arms even an insinuation of dishonesty on their part, that fall as far short of being honest and honorable men as thieves do of being angels. They are an ingenious sort of people, whose heads are full of tricks and schemes, and their greatest joy consists of working them upon the public. They had rather make money dishonestly than honestly. To enlist them in any cause only the whisper of the word scheme is necessary. Yet, they pay their debts and they seem to think that this alone will carry them to “heaven on flowery beds of ease.”

The honest and honorable men in a community are those, with characters so well known, as to never be approached secretly or otherwise, in behalf of screening any evil, upholding any wrong, fostering any unholy scheme. They stand boldly for right living and everybody knows it.

The clever, popular men of a community are not always the honorable and the honest. Their popularity often results from their closed lips and silent hands. They are polite, generous and liberal, but are approachable and ready participants in any sort of secret deal for a little cash. Money in their eyes looks brighter than honesty and they are neither honest nor honorable, although very clever fellows.

But there is in every community persons, possessed of righteous consciences, with so high ideals of the right and so much hatred for the wrong, as to be unable to restrain themselves in taking brave, bold stands in every civic and religious reform.

Boys, the object of this article is to elevate manhood in Gwinnett county and the latter are the characters for your patterns. Be men.

Say, what is honor? ’Tis the finest sense

Of justice which the human mind can frame,

Intent each lurking frailty to disclaim,

And guard the way of life from all offense,

Suffered or done.—Wordsworth. —Gwinnett, (Ga.) Journal.

Sacred Prosperity.

Divine right is still to be discovered in high finance, although not so usual as a few years ago it was. A group of minority stockholders, clamoring for an accounting from Mr. HARRIMAN, were consoled by his lawyer with the assurance that “Mr. Harriman moves in a higher world, where stockholders may not hope to enter.” The president of the Union Pacific Railroad may continue to keep stockholders beyond the battlements of his personal paradise; but the Interstate Commerce Commission, by virtue of the Railroad Rate bill, have the right to make inquisitorial entry. The rate bill became a law on August 28. The raising of the Union Pacific dividend from six to ten per cent. was effected by Mr. Harriman on August 16. If the Interstate Commerce Commission have been under embarrassment about picking a railroad which shall be compelled to lower its freight rates, the juxtaposition of dates should make them easy. A road which at once pays exorbitant dividends and charges exorbitant rates seems to need their services. It is not for the purpose of paying higher wages to his conductors and engineers that Mr. Harriman charges high rates. His operating expenses are but 52.51 per cent. of his gross receipts; whereas the average of all our railroads is 67.79 per cent. When a shipper pays Mr. Harriman one dollar, fifty-three cents goes to pay the trainmen and for the other purposes embraced under operating expenses; about two cents goes for taxes, and forty-five cents goes to paying the interest on bonds and to meeting the necessities of Mr. Harriman’s ten per cent. requirements.—Collier’s Weekly.

Trial for Murder.

Our system of criminal jurisprudence is better than most, and as good as any with the possible exception of the English. But no one denies that it has monstrous faults. In New York recently one man shot another over a woman. Both men were rich and the woman beautiful—a combination that will instantly wreck the essential purpose of criminal law anywhere in the United States. Already the newspapers abundantly foreshadow what will happen. The material facts in the case—so far as concerns the purpose of the law to protect human life—were brought out by the coroner in about half an hour. Hereafter we shall hear very little of them.

Press reports assure us that a fine array of legal talent on either side is preparing to play a splendid game of chess. If it can be shown that one of the men led a life more vicious than the other that will score ten for the side that shows it. The sorry muck-heap of the woman’s career will be raked fore and aft until it has yielded every point that will count on one side or the other. The lawyers will construct a great melodrama, with the villain, heroine and hero, to be presented to the jury. The verdict—the very life of the accused—will depend upon the skill with which the game is played and the success with which the melodrama is “put on.”

“Thou shalt not kill,” says the commandment. One can imagine a completely civilized state, in noble dignity, requiring the one man to answer whether he did kill and murder the other, contrary to its statute. It is merely an imagining, however. Our famous murder trials, with their tawdry tricks in the face of death and their rotten plays to sentiment, are pretty exclusively barbarous.—Saturday Evening Post.

The Negroes.

Senator Bailey talks, as there is no law against his utterances. “The free negro,” he declares, in his amiable attempt to induce in his hearers a calm and rational mode of thought, “is a more serious menace to the South than the negro in slavery.” In Alabama, a couple of weeks ago, at a Republican convention, there was not a negro present—one of the details indicating a general drift of the Republicans toward leaving the negroes out of their politics. Meantime, the negroes themselves are divided sharply in their meeting of the situation. The so-called “Niagara Movement” puts out an address to the country which observes: “We claim for ourselves every single right that belongs to a free-born American, political, civil, and social.” The whole address is a mass of almost bombastic rhetoric on this theme. Meantime, another leader speaks: “Let constructive progress be the dominant note among us in every section of America. An inch of progress is worth more than a yard of fault-finding. The races that have grown strong and useful have not done so by depending upon finding fault with others, but by presenting to the world evidences of progress in agriculture, industrial and business life, as well as through religious, educational, and civic growth.” Without failing to make it clear that he wishes the equal protection of the law, Mr. Washington refuses to complain, to whine about social rights and aspirations, and prefers to tell his fellows the most useful things to do. He leaves white faults to white men and warns negroes against negro weaknesses. Which leader will the negroes follow, and which speaks with wisdom and with strength?—Collier’s Weekly.

The Labor Famine.

What has become of all our laborers is a question which no one seems able to answer just at present, but that they are not to be had is too well known. In the cotton belt of Texas, churches and Sunday schools are organizing parties and going into the fields to save the crop; in other of the cotton growing states the women are helping the men gather the staple; immigrants are offered work almost before they have put a foot on American soil; out West two great rival railroads are scouring the woods for men; factories where child labor has been legislated out are running short-handed, and it would appear that if our prosperity did not abate a bit from other causes it would do so from lack of labor with which to carry it on. Meanwhile communities are learning the gentle art of smiling, trade is booming and not even an approaching election can offer an opening to the pessimist.—Pensacola News.

Cotton and the Negro.

Our Statesmen tell us in one breath that the salvation of the South is in the planting of less cotton and getting more for it and, in the very next breath, they say that immigration will save us. They invite the yankee to come, and the German, and the Irish, and the Scandinavian and even the Italian.

If it be true that we are planting enough cotton, even too much, and it is true, wherein will the South be benefited by having thousands of the foreigners settle here to raise more cotton? There is but one answer. We don’t need any more cotton planters.

But it is contended that foreign immigration will settle the race question. Maybe it will. Maybe it won’t. The cotton patch negro hasn’t given us any trouble, nor will he, and he isn’t going to leave either. He is satisfied, his landlord is satisfied, and a German or a Scandinavian upon the scene will mean two cotton patches instead of one, one for him and one for the negro.

True, there are many of our ambitious farmers who can’t secure enough laborers to make enough cotton to get rich as fast as they would, but they’ll get rich quick enough in using our present available labor, thereby raising less cotton, getting more for it, and, at the same time, either resting their lands or sowing it in small grain. And when these wealthy farmers plant less cotton, they benefit every poor fellow, standing between the plow handles, in the entire South.

And this one or two horse farmer is the ideal citizen, anyway. The best communities are those made up of small farmers. The churches, schools and social conditions in a community, in which one man owns all the land and runs forty plows, are not as good as one with forty land owners. Oglethorpe county would, no doubt, be a better county today, if Jim Smith had never been born, and this is not said with the spirit of criticising a single act of his life, either.

It’s all right for immigrants to build our cities, our railroads, our manufacturing enterprises or to labor in the cities, on the railroads, in the factories or even take servants’ places, but the South doesn’t need any more cotton raisers.—Gwinnett (Ga.) Journal.

The Railroad Power.

The railroad magnates have divided up the lines in this country among nine families of plutocrats, who by controlling transportation of passengers and freight, can control the Government. They are divided as follows:

That is three-fourths of the mileage of the country and the control of the main lines in every state and territory. It puts into the hands of these men a greater power than was ever exercised by any group of kings, lords and dukes who ever formed a community of interests. In all past history, to overthrow such a power as that, a resort to long and bloody wars was the only recourse. It remains to be seen whether the great peace movements of the last few years, for which Andrew Carnegie has built a temple at The Hague, will produce a sentiment strong enough to settle this question peaceably. Would Andrew Carnegie encourage anarchistic disorders if he thought there was a danger of a reduction of the tariff on steel? Railroad combination and robber tariffs are only another manifestation of what we once called the “money power.”—Omaha (Neb.,) Investigator.

Populism Forever.

Whatever may be the future of the People’s party, whether it is doomed to pass away and give place to some other party that will present its principles, or whether it may yet rise as it deserves to do and get control of the Government, remains yet to be seen.

One thing is certain. It has already accomplished more in this Government in the last fifteen years in the way of creating public sentiment and political conviction than both of the old parties.

Fifteen years ago the two old parties were discussing nothing but Tariff. The Money question, the Railroad question and the Trust question were entirely ignored by them. Not because the leaders of the two old parties did not know the magnitude and importance of these questions; but they got their campaign boodle from these rich corporations and they were willing to accept the money and let the common people perish.

When the Populists came on the scene they began to “cry aloud and spare not.”

They showed that the same laws of supply and demand that regulated the prices of other commodities, also regulated the price of money, that when money was plentiful, prices were high, all kinds of business prosperous and labor fully employed and well paid. While on the other hand when money was scarce it was high; all industries paralized, men out of work and their families suffering for bread.

They showed that the great railroad corporations had secured the public franchises and were taxing the people without their consent and without mercy.

They showed that their great corporations, growing enormously rich were combining together and forming “Trusts” and that they will eventually control all prices, and as completely own and control the country as did the Barons under the Feudal system.

Their cry and their plea was invincible.

Their arguments could not be answered.

Ridicule and abuse might serve to keep them down for awhile, but the just indictment against the two old parties was destined some day to be sustained.

Today the Populist looks on with pleasure and sees his principles growing in public favor every day.

The Republican president and the Democratic leader are endorsing the very doctrines that were fifteen years ago considered the most radical.

All honor to the Populists.—Nevada County (Ark.) Picayune.

Sense.

Can there be such a thing as a radical conservative? John Temple Graves thinks Col. Pleasant Stovall, of the Savannah Press, fits that kind of a job. We believe that a trimmer—if that is what Col. Graves means to call Col. Stovall—is the most decent citizen that afflicts human society. He stops rushing things when a sense of the proprieties tells him that a thing has been rushed far enough to make it coarse or common (use which word you prefer), and the result is that his hair does not grow too long, nor his ears too puritanically short.

Yes, sir, the medium grade takes the cake. Except in an occasional storm, the radicals may overrun all opposition; but it don’t last, and the fellow that wins on an extravagant moral issue may be found in the ditch dead drunk as soon as public sentiment gets normal and resorts for a season to common sense arrangements of its ethics and politics.

Yes, the men who make an over-display of honesty for the season always get left as soon as the folks get back to their normal qualities. Common sense controls when the excitement has passed.—Cordele Rambler.

A Lesson in Fusion.

Hearst got beat for Governor of New York while the balance of the State ticket he was on got elected. A few of the successful candidates are Independence League men, but most of them are straight Democrats. Thus Hearst’s reform work was turned to the benefit of corrupt and foul Tammany. We hope this lesson in fusion will be enough for the League. Hearst was defeated by about 60,000, while the other State candidates on the League-Democratic fusion ticket were elected by small pluralities. Tammany scratched Hearst. The Wall Street element of the Democratic party either scratched him or voted the Republican ticket. We are inclined to think well of Hearst because of those who scratched him. Hearst says the fight for the rights of the people is still on. With his great daily papers he can do a vast work toward overthrowing the rule of the money power, if he gets into the middle of the road and stays there. But if he endeavors to work within the old party he will do more to prevent the success of the people than forty Clevelands could do. Maybe the thing wasn’t hardly ripe and he had to back out, which he did by fusing with the Democrats after the League had nominated a straight ticket. We are guessing that Hearst will be in the middle of the road supporting Tom Watson for President in 1908.—Missouri World.

A Significant Vote.

Whatever may be said of W. R. Hearst’s individual sincerity and integrity of purpose, the vote which almost landed him in the governor’s chair of New York State—a position which is next to the presidency—is the vote which is dissatisfied with corporation conditions. It is a significant vote. And the strong anti-Hearst sentiment among the “upper ten” all over the South is also significant. Everywhere men are, consciously or unconsciously, taking their positions along lines of economics.—Farmers’ Journal, Abilene, Texas.

Where He Belongs.

Tom Watson is back in Georgia, where he belongs. He is too warm, too impulsive, too frank and too honest for New York—cold, calculating, deceitful, hateful New York.—Farmers’ Journal, Abilene, Tex.