The true Tom Watson : an essay on the salient phases of the career of the sage of McDuffie, from material furnished the author by Mr. Watson / by William W. Brewton ; with a foreward by Dudley Glass

Tru
Tom Watson
WILLIAM W. BREWTON-
Of The Atlanta Bar
A 1km harmless to the weakest lamb, Though fiercely scorning like a lamb.to be: His ruling passion to be wild and free ,
As wind and waves, with no compulsive calm Save Gods. To God alone he turned the psata,
Or bowed the head, or uttered prayer or plea; To none but God he ever bent the knee, Or incense burned, or offered bull or ram. His mind was Space and Time in spirit swung; His brain was Reasons self encased hi bone; His speech, the summer storm with A storm of logic thundered from a throne. Oer an our hearts his scepter might have himg Had he but learned to tame and rule his own.
BLBCKLBT.
1*5 Cents

THE SAGE PUBLISHING CO.

F1AT1RON BUILWNG

ATLANTA.

*

Honorable THOMAS E. WATSON

The True

^



Tom Watson / By

WILLIAM W. BREWTON

.

*

Of The Atlanta Bur.

An Essay on the Salient Phases of the Career of the Sag* of McDuffie, from Material Furnished the Author by Mr. Watson, With a Foreword by Dudley Glass.
Price 50 Cents

Copyrighted 1922 by

THE SAGE PUBLISHING COMPANY

FLAT1RON BUILDING

ATLANTA. GA.

eaf

FOREWORD

William W. Brewton, author of The True Tom Watson", has been known for years among his friends as a "Tom Watson Man." As a lad in high school he learned to admire Mr. Watson almost to the point of adoration, devouring his books and every issue of his publications. At Emory College, then in Oxford, Ga., young Brewton was pointed out as a Tom Watson man," an unusual personage in that institution.

Mr. Brewton carried on a correspondence with Mr. Watson which led to their meeting and a friendship which continued until Senator Watsons death. On a visit to the author and statesman at "Hickory Hill" when young Brewton was preparing for the bar, Mr. Watson autographed and gave to the young student his own well-worn copy of the work on Constitutional Law which he had studied in his youth, which still is a prized possession of the author of this work.

Senator Watson, after His election to the United States Senate, furnished Mr. Brewton, in a series of letters, with material for an essay on his life, work and ambitions. It was Mr. Brewtons in tention to prepare this essay .for publication in one of the leading magazines, but the death of its distinguished subject and the addi tional interest in Senator Watsons career which this occasioned, led to his decision to publish the work in this form and offer it to the public not as a complete biography of Senator Watson but as a study of the man and some of the high lights of his career.

The South has given birth to no more interesting figure than Thomas E. Watson, author, orator, statesman, and Mr. Brewton has drawn a picture of the Sage of McDnffie well worth the attention of those who admire ability, perseverance and courage.

Atlanta, Ga., Nov. 1, 1922.

DUDLEY GLASS. ;

The True Tom Watson
WILLIAM W. BREWTON Of The Atlanta Bar
A lion harmless to the weakest lamb, Though fiercely scorning like a lamb to be: His ruling passion to be wild and free
As wind and waves, with no compulsive calm Save Gods. To God alone he turned the psalm,
Or bowed the head, or uttered prayer or plea; To none but God he ever bent the knee, Or incense horned, or offered bnD or nun. His mind was Space and Time in spirit swung; His brain was Reasons self encased in bone; His speech, the summer storm with human A storm of logic thundered from a throne. Oer an our hearts his scepter might have hung Had he but learned to tame and role his own.
JUSTiCK BLECKLEY.
Thus spoke Logan Bleckley, Chief Justice of the George Supreme Court, of General Robert Toombs, and thus also recently spoke Hon. S. Guyton McLendon, Georgia Secretary of State, of United States Senator Thomas E. Watson, who died September 26, 1922, at the age of 66 years.
Georgia had turned to the school of Alexander H. Stephens, Bob Toombs and Ben Hill- selecting the last surviving statesman of the type for a Senator. In so doing, the modern school of opportunists amd "practical" politicians was scouted, and a scholar-statesman, who was more in tune with principle than policy, chosen.
Brilliant, spectacular, highly gifted in speech, and with the pen, The Sage of McDuffie carried to the Senate the traditions of an era of truly great men. The versatility of Watson was the chief

cause of his notoriety. Laughing at a fate which sent him adversity in realm after realm of endeavor, Watson wrested fame from many.
Lawyer, lecturer, politician, publicist and historian box the com pass of the Watson fame; and in each role the keynote has been reform. "Tribune of the Common People" was the title as loyal a following as any man ever had chose for Watson, who, at the age
of 64 years, and after 40 years of tempestuous career, was elected to the United States Senate in the Georgia primary of September 8, 1920.
Born to fair financial advantages in Columbia County, Georgia, September 5, 1866, Watson was nevertheless thrown upon himself for advancement early in life because of disaster to property, a con dition which took him from college, Mercer University, Macon, Ga., when his course was only half completed. He had known what it was to plow fields for $8 a month and teach a log cabin country school. He had known what it was to trudge across the country several miles to a small law office, carrying his dinner in a tin bucket. At that time $2 a day was good money to him.
Dubbed by his college professors a "history hog," Watson in his early professional years continued to read every worthy book his diligent searches could discover. The passing years brought him abundant success in his chosen profession, though practiced in the Georgia country counties of Columbia and McDuffie. He was admitted to the bar in 1875, at the age of 19. Long before direct ing his attention to other spheres of achievement, his yearly income from his law business amounted to more than $12,000. He became known as one of the greatest criminal lawyers Georgia had pro duced.
Nothing so well illustrates the romantic Watsonian tempera ment as the court-room encounter he had with the late and brilliant Savannah lawyer, H. D. D. Twiggs, which came near culminating in a duel.
Twiggs, some 20 years Watsons senior, was a giant at the bar in .the early *90s, and, in his withering sarcasm, would "lambast" Watson when he had the conclusion before the jury. Following Twiggs speech in a Columbia County case, in 1890, Watson called him .into the jury room, (according to the account of the affair given by Watson to the writer), locked the door, put the key in his pocket and announced that he did not suppose Twiggs wanted to kill him and that he did not desire to take the life of Twiggs, but that "some body was going to be killed if Twiggs did not alter his tone toward him in the court room."
"Twiggs was a courageous man," declares Mr. Watson, in cor respondence with the present writer on the incident, "and we quickly came to an understanding and the affair dropped for the time. Later, when I was in the race for Congress, Twiggs made a speech at

Waynesboro in which he severely attacked me. I came back at him in the newspapers and he forthwith sent his law partner, Marion Verdery, to my home at Thomson with a communication looking to a duel. I told Mr. Verdery that I was not a dueling man, the prac tice being against the law, and refused to receive the note. I de clared to Verdery, however, that I would be at Augusta at the fair on a certain day and would be prepared to defend myself, if attacked. I did go to Augusta on the appointed day, and Twiggs, who at that time was practicing law in Augusta, was on the streets; but neither of us spoke to the other. Afterwards we became strong friends and so remained until Judge Twiggs death, He proffered his services to me as counsel when I was tried in Augusta in the fall of 1914 on the charge of sending obscene literature through the mails/ an indictment growing out my anti-Catholic writings."
A recital of some of Mr. Watsons most noteworthy criminal cases is in point at this juncture.
A bitterly hard fought case was that of Major G. E. McGregor who was treid for the murder of one James Gody at Warrenton. McGregor and Gody had feasted together one night at a lodge meet ing, after which the former was waylaid in his own yard and shot. It was a year later that the Major deciphered who had shot him, according to his claim, and he proceeded to secure a true bill against Cody, but could not get the case to trial. Believing that the alleged would-be-assassin would complete his work, he decided that delay meant death, and providing himself with a gun, he went up to Gody on the street and shot him dead. Mr. Watson defended McGregor alone, his associate, the late James Whitehead having been sudden ly taken out of the case because of the illness of one of his children. Against him were arrayed three famous lawyers. The leader of the prosecution was that old veteran of criminal law, Judge H. D. D. Twiggs, whose record in murder cases has rarely been equaled. With Twiggs were associated the late Hal Lewis, who nominated Bryan for President at the National Democratic Convention in 1896, and who became Associate Justice of the .Georgia Supreme Court, and another lawyer. Mr. Watson won this case, arguing that for the defendant to anticipate the attack of the deceased was the logical extension of the law. It is needless to assert, however, that it re quired all the defending counsels ability back of such a contention to secure a verdict.
At another time Mr. Watson crossed swords with Judge Twiggs in the so-called outlaw affair of Screven County, where civil out break on a small scale had to be curbed with troops. The sheriff of the county, Brookens, had a fight with George Zeigler, a promi nent farmer. The sheriff, boarding the train at a small station, pointed his pistol at Zeigler through the window and shot him to death, the latter thinking the fight was over. Two successive grand

juries failed to indict, for some reason. Zeigler's two boys there upon went to a camp ground where Mr. Watson had taught school when a boy of 19, and killed Brookens. Arguing that the sheriff had threatened the lives of the two boys, Mr. Watson, their counsel, again used the point of anticipation. He pointed out particularly, however, that Brookens had killed Zeigler, and Zeigler's boys had killed Brookens, and that the affair had better stop right where it was, else there was no telling how many more persons would be drawn into it and killed. The jury acquitted after a trial compris ing parts of two weeks. Twiggs was assisted by E. K. Overstreet.
A case of unusual drama was that of Miss Elvira Ivey, who shot and killed one McCauley, her married lover, as he approached her bedroom window. McCauley, who was thought to have intended elopement, as he had promised to secure a divorce, had with him $1,500 at the time; and Mr. Watson, who was for the prosecution, argued to the jury that the young woman's family had conspired with her to secure the money from the young man. This argument was based on the circumstances of a late hour at night, a lonely country place, and a very fierce and noisy watch-dog who made no noise on this particular night, which he would certainly have done had he not been taken into the house or otherwise disposed of. Mr. Watson argued that the gun, an old-fashioned hammer shot-gun, had been cocked before McCauley approached the window, inasmuch as he would otherwise have heard the sharp, clear click on this calm, still night, being attentive to every sound and apprehensive of dan ger. The girl was defended by two able lawyers of experience, but was convicted. However, during the course of the trial the letters which had passed between the girl and young man, and the general circumstances surrounding the case, aroused in Mr. Watson a sym pathy for her, and he withdrew from the case. She secured a new trial on technical grounds, and was finally acquitted.
Another case which caused wide 'comment was that of Douglas Cooper, who killed one Dunson in LaGrange, Ga. Hon. Charles D. Hill, of Atlanta, who won fame as a solicitor general throughout his own circuit and the state, was chief counsel for the prosecution. Mr. Watson for the defense, associated with him Governor Sanford, of Alabama, the governor having returned to the law practice. As reported in the newspapers, Cooper went up to Dunson on the street, and after a few words of altercation, slapped his hat off, and, while Dunson was in the act of putting his hat on, after stooping down and picking it up, Cooper shot him.
The actual facts, according to Mr. Watson, were different. His associate insisted that insanity be pleaded. Mr. Watson overruled this, and a plea of self-defense was made. Cooper was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to serve twelve years. Over protest of associate counsel ,Mr. Watson filed a motion for new trial,
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which being: denied by the trial court, the case went to the Supreme Court and a new trial was granted. The new trial was secured on the ground that the sheriff had carried a Code of Georgia to the jury room at the jurys request, a member of which wanted to look up the law of homicide. At the second trial, over which Judge Mar cus Beck presided, the defendant was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter, and sentenced to one year.
Mr. Watson crossed swords with Charley Hill again in the Adkins case in Atlanta, when the able solicitor general was aided by no less a legal light than Luther Z. Rosser, of the Atlanta bar. Judge John S. Candler presided. Adkins, who killed a fellow-clerk in a store, was acquitted. ..
At the request of the late B. M. Glenn, of the Atlanta bar, whose nervous system had been broken down by another case, Mr. Watson went to Jonesboro and took his place in the defense of a man in dicted for murdering his wife. Charley Hill again led the prosecu tion, and Judge Candler presided. The judge excluded the public from the court-house and drew the trial jury from the grand jury box, neither of which acts Mr. Watson ever knew of having been
e before or since, he said. Speaking of the case to the present writer, Mr. Watson said, "it was terribly close, and Charley Hill put all of his power into it. There was a mistrial, however, and that ended the case. The defendant was released on a nominal bond, and was never again molested. The last I heard of him he was a street car conductor in Atlanta."
Douglas Cooper became a prominent business man in Alabama; the Zeigler boys went into the banking business in South Georgia and succeeded; Elvira Ivey married a respectable farmer, "and never again gained any notoriety;" young Adkins went back into business; and Major McGregor was elected twice to the Georgia Senate since his trial, Mr. Watson pointed out in summing up the records of these clients.
. Watson entered politics in the support of Rufus E. Lester, of Savannah, against General Alfred Colquitt, in the gubernatorial campaign of 1880. He sprang into state-wide fame by a fiery speech in the Atlanta convention in opposition to the nomination of Col quitt. The speech was brief and extemporaneous, but it was hot. It swept the convention off its feet and Colquitt was merely "rec ommended" for Governor by a scant majority, while the minority held a separate convention and offered State Senator Thomas M. Norwood, of Savannah, for Governor. So well fixed was the speech in Mr. Watsons mind, that, on the night following the day it was delivered, he dictated it to Sam Small, of The Atlanta Constitution, and the Atlanta papers were full of it the next day. Colquitt was finally elected, Mr. Watson said, because "the Atlanta politicians, aided by Joseph E. Brown, paid up the back taxes of the negroes

and brought out their full vote, for the first time in many years." In 1882, Mr. Watson was elected to the Georgia Legislature,
lower house, and served one term, refusing to run for re-election, as the office interfered with his law practice. While in the Legis lature, however, he amended the Georgia law of Landlord and Ten ant, so that the tenant could litigate any disputed question of rent with his landlord, fon equal terms. Before that amendment, the tenant could not do so on equal terms, Watson claimed. The Watson amendment is still in force. Watson advocated the abolition of the convict lease system, "which commercialized the state's sovereign right to punish and reform her criminals, to money-making 'com panies whose only interest was to maintain the convict at the lowest possible cost and to work him to the utmost human capacity." Mr. Watson was chosen by the Temperance Committee, the chairman of which was Representative Pringle, of Washington County, to make the speech in reply to those who opposed the local option law. The Watson forces passed the law, under which the people got rid of the bar rooms in 117 counties.
Making a comparison with present-day national prohibition, Mr. Watson said: "The Georgia law resting upon the public sentiment of the counties which adopted it, was more successful than the present Volstead Act, which has given rise to more illicit distilleries, and more poisoned whiskey, than was ever before known in Georgia."
By no means the least among his works, later, was the bringing about of disfranchisement of negroes in Georgia by Watson, whose speech in Atlanta on September 11, 1904, suggested the law now on Georgia statute books.
The reader is familiar with the fact that Thomas E. Watson was the inspiration and leader of the Populist Party, and was nomi nated by it for President twice, (1904, 1908). In the first campaign he secured a popular vote of 117,935. He and William Jennings Bryan ran together on the Populist ticket in 1896, when the Demo cratic and Populist leaders made a fusion* trade, which was reluct antly sanctioned by Mr. Watson, who was nominated as Vice Presi dent.
Watson was elected to Congress from the Tenth Georgia Dis trict in 1890, and during his two years' service created the Rural Free Delivery mail system, which today is of such immense propor tions, and which work many a politician throughout the country has claimed credit for. The system was inaugurated, the Congressional Record shows, with Mr. Watson's amendment to the postal appro priations bill of February 17, 1893. The amendment made it man datory upon the Postmaster General to take $10,000 of the appro priation and expend it experimenting upon actual rural delivery of mail--outside cities, towns and villages.
He having gained much unpopularity by denouncing gambling
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and whisky drinking by Congressmen, Mr, Watsons enemies seized the opportunity in 1892 to begin the bitterest campaign in the his tory of Eastern Georgia to defeat him. /They selected J. C. C. Black, a brilliant and capable Augustan, to oppose the "red-headed Thom son man," and stopped at nothing to win the race. It is common knowledge that more negroes were voted against Watson in Au gusta than there were inhabitants in the town by the census returns. Some of these negroes were women, imported from South Carolina, who were dressed in mens clothes, debauched with liquor, and voted "God knows how many times," according to accounts of the affair by men who admitted taking part in it. Adherents of Black camped around Watsons home, seeking to take his life. Watson was defeated by being "counted out," his friends claimed.)
Speaking of his position in Congress, lor. Watson told the pres ent writer: "My race was made upon what was known as the Ocala Platform of the Farmers Alliance, and I declined to enter the Demo cratic caucus in Washington, because I knew that the Eastern and Northern Democrats would tie my hands. Nearly thirty years later, Senator La Follette pursued the same course, and while his action was eulogized by the Independent and Democratic press, mine had been almost universally denounced in the bitterest terms."
Defeated for Congress in his second race, Watson closed the doors of his library upon himself, and, the War of 1898 having in terrupted his political hopes, penned two historical works of inter national fame, The Story of France, a complete history of the French from the earliest times to the Consulate of Napoleon Bonaparte, and Napoleon, regarded by many critics in this country and abroad as the best one-volume life of the great Emperor and general. His Life and Times of Thomas Jefferson and Life and Times of Andrew Jackson are also well-known works. Concerning his chief work, The Story of France, the book reviewer of The Philadelphia North Ameri can, in 1898, said: "Many histories of France have been written, but none equal to this."
The Story of France was finished in largest part in 1898, in which year the first volume of the two-volume work was published. The work made such an impression that the publishers, The MacMillan Company, (New York), issued several editions of Volume I before Mr. Watson completed Volume II, which was a year later. This history is prominent in university and other scholastic, as well as private libraries in France, England and America. Institutions of learning in France use it as a collateral text-book.
Mr. Watsons Napoleon was completed in 1901, and was pub lished by the MacMillans. It went through a large number of edi tions and won the same vogue abroad and in the United States that is enjoyed by The Story of France.
Mr. Watsons Life and Times of Thomas Jefferson was finished

in 1903, and was followed about two years later by his Life and Times of Andrew Jackson. During the interval between these two works, Mr. Watson wrote his only work of fiction, the novel, Bethany, a love-story of old plantation life in the South. The scenes of the novel were laid in Georgia, and through its pages walk General Robert Toombs, Alexander H. Stephens, Senator Ben Hill and other illustrious Georgians. Bethany was published by D. Appleton & Company, in 1904. In it the hero meets Toombs, Stephens and Hill in the Kimball House in Atlanta, Georgia's famous political ren dezvous.
About the year 1910, when he built his own printing plant in a field near his home at Thomson, Ga., at a cost of $100,000, Mr. Wat son bought from the various publishers the stereotyped plates of all these works and published them himself. His plant, the Jeffersonian Press, printed and bound the works in a style as handsome as that in which they were issued by the eastern publishers.
From 1906 until 1918 the Sage of McDuffie edited and pub lished Watson's Magazine, monthly, and The Jeffersonian, weekly political and generally satirical paper. It was for articles of his in the former that he was indicted for "sending obscene literature through the mails" by a federal grand jury in Augusta in the Spring of 1913. Though hundreds of lawyers in all sections of the coun try volunteered their services, Mr. Watson conducted his own case, retaining several attorneys, among them Mr. McLendon. Mr. Wat son threw the case out of court by making a motion to quash the indictment on the ground that the United States Attorney had quoted in it only a part, and had not set out the entirety of the article com plained of. Mr. Watson contended that the language was obscene, but that he quoted it verbatim from a Catholic Latin text-book, which had been going through the mails for more than a hundred years; and he maintained the Latin in quoting. If the publishers of the book had never violated a federal statute, then he had not, he con tended. Judge W. W. Lambdin sustained Mr. Watson's motion to quash and that ended the case until the United States Attorney could procure a new indictment curing the defects of the old one, which he did. Trial on this indictment resulted first in a mistrial, and then in an acquittal in 1915.
Attorney General Gregory began preparing to remove Mr. Wat son to another state for trial on the ground that the government could not "get a square deal in Watson's case in Georgia." A furor of protest broke loose from the Georgia press--even from Mr. Wat son's bitterest enemies. J. J. Brown, now Georgia Secretary of Agriculture, who was vice president of Mr. Watson's Jeffersonian Publishing Company, related to the present writer how he went to Washington and called on Attorney General Gregory in regard to the threatened move. Mr. Brown delivered to the Attorney Gen-
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era! Mr. Watsons celebrated defi, declaring that Mr. Watson sent him greetings and the information that he "would resist to the death every United States marshal, or deputy, "who ever entered his front yard for the purpose of taking him to another state."
"I will die on my own front porch before you move me a step," was Mr. Watsons defiance of the Attorney General whom, in edi torial after editorial, in his weekly paper, he dared to make the slightest attempt toward taking him out of Georgia for trial.
The. Sage of McDuffie continued with his publications, and was sought after incessantly by Georgia politicians who wanted his support in their candidacies. Many a trip was made to "Hickory Hill," the Thomson home of Mr. Watson, where his books were written and where his burning editorials were issued. ^ * At this time not haying political support enough to be elected to office himself, and not caring for office, the Sage occupied the anomalous position of controlling Georgia politics. He had the balance of power. There were, from the earliest days of Populist in fluence, some 30,000 Georgians, called by Watson his "Old Guard," who were always ready to do the bidding of their "Chief," who never asked any questions, but who voted when and how he willed. This number was a balance of power and it was this "signed, sealed and delivered" vote that the candidates tried to get in Georgia every two years. Hoke Smithgot it in 1906 and went in for Governor, overwhelmingly. Joseph M. Brown got Mr. Watsons assistance in 1908 and put Hoke Smith out of office. In 1910, the Sage was silent and Hoke was re-elected. He opposed Smiths election te the Senate by the Legislature in 1911, but went down to defeat himself. But for 30 years, Thomas E. Watson held the balance for political power in the State of Georgia, and there are few men who would question the claim for an instant.
Secretary of State McLendon, learned lawyer, and life-long friend of Watsons, recently likened the Sage of McDuffie to four historical figures. He said:
"Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, James Otis and Andrew Jackson were all reflected in Thomas E. Watson. He loved liberty with the passion of Henry; he always held to his political "doctrine, untarnished, as did Jefferson; he possessed all the courage of Jack son; and he had all the great heart and flaming tongue of Otis."
But there is one universally known history-maker to whom Thomas E. Watson is more appropriately likened than to any of those mentioned above. There is but one man in all history to whom he is to be compared without reserve, and that man is Voltaire, whose audacity, whose hatred of hypocrisy, whose bitter opposition to sham, in Church and State, are so thrilKngly featured in the Watson his tory of France.
If like Voltaire, the common peoples tribune, it is still more
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like Voltaire, the bitter satirist, that the late Georgia Senator is best characterized. It is in this role that he became "the best loved and worst hated man in the South." His lance of ridicule was thrust into the most conventional beliefs and traditions of the church. Catholic belief he waged bitter war against, and Protestant prac tices he fought. Politicians, officeholders, teachers--men in every walk of life--felt the lash of the Watsonian satire.
Visit after visit to the home of Watson was made for the pur pose of taking his life, the Thomson police have declared. Refused admittance at his front door--which Mr. Watson would not open, unless he knew who was on the outside--many a figure in priestly garb has thrown upon the hall floor a scurrilous printed denunci ation and departed hastily. For months Mr. Watson's mail brought him, daily, hundreds of letters threatening his life. His managing editor, Mrs. Alice Louise Lytle, was forced to sort out the threat ening letters, to keep the "Chief" from seeing them, for a long time. To his last day, Mr. Watson was loath to ride in an elevator. Anti-Catholic writings of his brought out so many threats, that the Sage feared to subject himself to the danger of such close quart ers with any stranger. He feared assassination for more than ten years. Armed with a shotgun, and accompanied by sheriff's depu ties, he "scoured the country round" on his Thomson plantation numbers of times, in an effort to locate persons who had informed him they intended to take his life in his own home.
But what examples of the Watsonian satire have we? This literary and forensic weapon Watson wielded from his early profes sional years through the days when he spoke on the floor of the United States Senate--wielded it as no other American, nay, as no other man the world ever knew--has ever wielded it.
When thirty years of age, Mr. Watson delivered the commence ment address at Mercer University, and in part said:
"Is there no truth ? You know the Psalmist exclaimed, 'I said in my haste that all men are liars,' and you remember the good brother who added, 'Yes, and if David had taken all his life to think about it he would have reached the same conclusion.' In one sense of the word I suppose we all do lie. For instance, you tell me you are sorry to hear that I have been sick, when the truth is you don't care any more about my health, than you do about the fate of a last year's May pop.
"I am sitting in my room on Sunday; have done a hard week's work, and now I'm going to have a quiet, restful day at home-- stretched on the lounge with a book in my hand. All at once a buggy drives up and stops at my gate. There's Jones and Jones's wife, who is as full of weak conversation as the church is of weak mem bers; and Jones's baby, which is teething and giving its attention to the development of a fine pair of lungs. The whole concern has
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come to spend the day! Merciful heavens! Seeing them coming in I grow faint and desperate and suicidal. I form wild notions of jumping over the back fence and taking to the woods. Too late. The door bell rings, and I sadly lay aside book and go to meet them. See me do it. Why, Jones, old fellow, how dye do; and the Madam and the baby? Gome in; come in rejoiced to see you/ And such a smile as I do get up. Well, now since I think of it, I am not so sure about this smiling business. If I am not a candidate for any thing I am not so sure that I smile. If I am, I am quite sure that I do. For when Im a candidate I am like the balance of them, and I have a lovely, heart-searching, vote lifting smile that my friends say is enough to melt the horns off a billy goat.
The reporter for the society column alludes to his lady friend as the beautiful and accomplished, when he knows that her face is a howling wilderness of bone and freckles and things, and that her mind is as empty as a politicians promise.
"We members of the bar have to examine applicants for ad mission. We ask them certain questions as to the law, and they answer or dont answer, as the case may be, and we rise, address the Judge, and say: We are satisfied, your Honor. Sometimes we are called upon to examine one of these fellows who miss about four-thirds of all the questions we ask. Still we use the formula: We are satisfied, and thus we let in another lawyer to ornament and bless mankind. And so we are satisfied satisfied that he doesnt know the difference between a conditional estate and a gatiing gun; satisfied that what he thinks he knows would stall a freight train on a down grade, and what he does know wouldnt embarass the retreat of a wounded mosquito."
Witty, ironic and full of sarcasm was Mr. Watsons editorial en titled With Brisbane at Delmonicos, published in his Georgia maga zine soon after his abandoning the publishing business in New York, where he issued Tom Watsons Magazine. It was about the year 1905 that the Sage quit New York to begin his career as publicist in his home state. Touching why he went to New York and why he returned, he divertingly told as follows:
"For months and months Arthur Brisbane, the great editor of the Hearst newspapers, had been urging me to come to New York, to take hold of an oar on board the wonderfully constructed trireme of William Randolph.
"From letters, the pressure grew to telegrams, and the im pression was gradually engraved upon my mind that unless I dropped everything and flew to the rescue the Hearst newspapers would suffer irreparable damage.
"Finally, there came over the heated wires the Brisbane dis tress call of Do Gome, and I could resist no longer.
"Not being able to bear the idea of what would happen if I did
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not go, I telegraphed Brisbane that he might expect me on a cer tain day. I was also particular to specify the right time of my arrival because it seemed a pity to have Mr. Hearst in his auto mobile miss the right train and meet the wrong one.
"So I put off from Thomson Thomaston Thomas Thomasville Tompson Thomason Tomson Tompkins.
"The name of the place has turned my hair prematurely gray, but nothing can break my toe-hold on the local situation, and I ex pect to live just as long as I possibly can at Thomson Thomaston Thomas Thomasville Thompson Thomaston Tomson Tompkins.
"And a smart little town it is, too. We have electric lights that keep you busy buying bulbs; we have an artesian well from which a steam pump extracts the water, and we have a town government which may be somewhat of a myth and a joke to vagrants, pool rooms, blind tigers and keepers of pig-style nuisances, but which is a dreadful reality to taxpayers.
"Please do not laugh. This is no joke. It is a solemn state ment of melancholy fact.
"But, as I was saying, I boarded the cars at the simple little town where I live, and was taken to New York, with the custo mary missing of connections and enjoyable delays which have given the Southern Railroad the very worst name among all the lawbreaking public-be-damned-railroads.
"In spite of all that the Southern Railroad could do, I finally landed in New York. .
"Brisbane is not imposing in personal appearance. He is neither tall nor large; he has no presence. He is inclined to baldness, stoops, rather than carries himself erect, and would never cause a casual passer-by to turn for a second look. When he talks his words come from his lips as though they were being pushed out through the small end of a funnel. There is an impression of tenseness, of con centration, of incisiveness, of compactness, and every thought is set forth in clear cut simple strength. He is so sharp in his mental sight and so apt in working his vivid-thought that he is sometimes 'Witty--almost*
"Never quite so. "His mental view takes in a situation so fully that his comment upon the absurdities of it almost attains humor. "Almost, but not quite. "His eye is so keen for contrasts that he seizes upon every de tail of a horrible condition, and in sketching it with his pen he al most reaches pathos. "Never more than that. "To melt into tears himself, and thus be able to draw the tears from your eyes, is foreign to his nature. Penetrating, clear-minded, wonderfully gifted with the power of expression, of condensation, of
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seizing upon the strongest points of any subject; rich in illustra tion, boundless in knowledge of men and things, a fighter of inex haustible resource such is Brisbane.
"Brisbane said: " I was at George Goulds not long ago. Hes very fond of your story of France. Reads it so intently that his -wife said to me, "Mr. Brisbane, I wish youd take that red book away from George he has it in his hands nearly all the time."
"Curious that George Gould should be reading a book which holds as much of the authors heart and soul as was ever breathed into printed pages a book which was so aggressively radical in its plea for oppressed humanity that the blue pencil of the publishers reader ruined some of its most important chapters.
"But I was a despised Populist in those days an outlaw whom everyone could revile and outrage with impunity; and among other bitter pills which I had to swallow was the destruction of scores of pages of my principal book.
"Said Brisbane to me: " Suppose you take charge of Hearsts Morning American, at $10,000 per year. Tou could come down to the office once a day, look over a few exchanges, dictate an editorial, and then have the remainder of your time to give to your more serious literary la bors. " If within the year you can make a success out of the Ameri can, you can practically fix your own salary thereafter. Of course, if you dont make The American a success, Hearst will have no further use for you. "To the point, you see. "But nothing came of it. The [1904] presidential campaign was on; it was necessary to wait till after the election; and after the election I feel an easy prey to our Town Topics friend, Colonel Mann.
"When, upon a later day, I told Brisbane about the arrange ment with our Town Topics friend he remarked quietly with de cision:
" Hes a d d old- rascal; simply wants to exploit you.* "In the course of our conversation mention was made of a certain well-known special correspondent of newspapers. "He doesnt know anything, said Brisbane. Besides, he has brown eyes. Tou never saw a brown-eyed man that had any sense. Gray eyes are the eyes of genius. " There was Caesar, born of a black-eyed race, but having gray eyes. Napoleon, born of a black-eyed race, had gray eyes,9 and so on. "He said all this quite earnestly, with every indication of settled conviction.
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"Naturally, I took notice of the color of Brisbane's eyes. "They are gray* "At the same time, he was noting the color of mine. They are gray. "To this hour I am uncertain whether Brisbane was hoaxing me, or whether he actually believes that queer thing about gray eyes.
"Beginning with Webster and Robert Burns, I could enroll a list of black-eyed men of genius that would convince even Brisbane that his theory about gray eyes is more curious than sound.
"It was an enjoyable meal, seasoned with much Brisbane knowl edge of men and things, but we couldn't tarry forever, even at Delmonico's, so Brisbane tipped the waiter 50 cents in cash, and had the luncheon charged to his regular account.
"A very careful man is Brisbane about giving tips. It's a part of his religion. He defends and glorifies the tipping system in his editorials.
"This is one of the Brisbane eccentricities that I can no more understand than I can understand why he editorially alludes to Joe Cans, the negro prize fighter, as 'a colored gentleman.'"
About a decade ago the Watson ire was raised by a public speech made by Booker T. Washington in which the negro leader made the assertion that the negro race had developed more in the preceding thirty years than the Latin race had in a thousand years. Washington based his assertion on statistics of comparative illiteracy, taking the negroes of the United States as his basis of comparison.
Ever the supreme champion of white supremacy, loved most in the South for that very reason, Watson went after the negro leader in a celebrated "knockout" editorial, perhaps his greatest piece of satire, which in part was as follows:
"With statistics one can prove many things--the conclusion arrived at depending, in all cases, considerably upon the man behind
the figures. "This time the man behind the figures is Doctor Booker Wash
ington--may his shadow never grow less! "Proud of his statistics, Doctor Booker Washington exclaims:
'The negro race has developed more rapidly in the thirty years of its freedom than the Latin race has in one thousand years of free
dom.' "That's a bold statement, Doctor. . . . "You have thousands of true friends throughout the entire
country. . . . They allude to your work as a great work. The South helps you with appropriations, just as the North helps you .with donations. We want to see you succeed in building up your
race. "But have you a single white friend who will endorse your
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statement that the black race is so superior to the whites that it can do in one generation what it required the whites a thousand
years to do? "Do you imagine that your friends, President Roosevelt, Mr.
.Carnegie, Dr. Hart, Bishop Potter, and others, will like you better when they hear you putting forth a claim to race superiority? Doc tor, you have over-shot the mark.
"Whenever the North wakes up to the fact that you are teach ing the blacks that they are superior to the whites, you are goiac to feel the east wind.
"What do you mean by racial development, Doctor? "Apparently your standard of measurement is illiteracy. That is to say, if a greater number of negroes than of Spaniards can read, then the negro has achieved a higher plane in civilization. "Is that your idea? Does the ability to read constitute race superiority? "According to that, a million negro children attend school twelve months and become civilized because they have learned to spell the way to baker, the first two-syllable word in the old Websters Spell ing book, and read Mary had a little lamb. "Does it not strike you, Doctor, that such a measure might be
delusive? "In making up your tables of illiteracy, why didnt you include
all the negroes, as you included all the Italians, all the Spaniards, all tiie Russians?
"Why leave out your home folks in Africa, Doctor? "Why omit Santo Domingo and Haiti? "If you will number all the negroes, Doctor, your percentage of illiteracy among the blacks may run up among the nineties, and knock your calculation into a cocked hat. ....
"As to Italy, can it be that Italy has done less in a thousand years than the negroes have done in thirty?
"The greatest man that ever lived was of Italian extraction. Taine says that Napoleon was a true Italian in character and in tellect. If that be true, then the two greatest men the world ever saw were Italians. Wherever the civilized man lives today, his environments, his thoughts, his ideals, his achievements are more or less influenced by the life and work of Caesar and Napoleon. . . .
"Wherever civilization extends its frontiers these deathless Latins are in the van teaching what Truth and Beauty are, re fining the thoughts, elevating the ideals, improving the methods, inspiring the efforts of man.
"The negroes have done more than this, and in thirty years? "Absurd! ....
"Tour race, as a race, is free now in Africa, as it has
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since the dawn of history where is the civilization which it worked out for itself? It does not exist; it never did exist.
"The negro has been absolutely unable to develop as a race when left to himself. Nowhere, at any time, has he developed a system of agriculture, or commerce, or manufactures, made head way in mining or engineering, or conceived a system of finance. Never has he produced a system of laws, institutions of state, re ligious organization, or worked out a political ideal. Never has he created a literature, or developed original capacity for the fine arts. His foot has never even crossed the threshold of the world of cre ative painting, sculpture, music, architecture. Into the realms of science, in the domain of original thought, in the higher reaches of mental power where the human mind grapples with vast problems, material and spiritual, the problems of time and eternity, the negro has never entered. No word has ever fallen from his lips that was not the echo of what some white man had already said. ....
"You had forgotten the Renaissance, hadn't you, Doctor? "Asia was decaying, Africa was in its normal state of sav agery, Europe lay torpid under the weight of ignorance and super stition. Where learning existed at all its spirit was dull, its form heavy, its progress fettered by ancient canons and cumbrous vest
ments. "Suddenly the Angel of Light--her face a radiance, her pres
ence an inspiration--puts a silver trumpet to her lips and blows, blows, till all the world of white men hears the thrilling notes.
"And lo! there is a resurrection! What was best in the learning of the past becomes young again.
"Literature springs to life, throws off antiquated dress, and takes its graceful modern form. The fine arts flourish as never before; the canvas, the marble, the precious metal, feel the subtle touch of the eager artist, and give birth to beauty which is im mortal. The heavy prison-castle of the Frank, the Goth, the Nor man, the Anglo-Saxon, retires abashed before the elegant, airy, poetic palace of the Renaissance.
"Nor does the revival of learning limit itself to literature, archi tecture; to religion, to education. It extends to law, to commerce, to agriculture, that mighty revival of intellectual splendor which still influences the world.
"Whence came the Renaissance, Doctor Washington? Whence came architecture, painting and sculpture? From the Latin race, which yon affect to despise. ....
"What has the negro in these United States being doing for the last thirty years, Doctor?
"COPYING THE WHITE MAN. That's all. . . "The Latin whites originated a civilization; the negroes are copying one.
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"My thought is this the negro, assisted in every possible way by the whites, is copying the ways and learning the arts of the white man; but the fact that he can learn to read the white mams books* does not make him the equal of the white race which produced th* book. The fact that he may learn from us how to practice law or medicine, does not make him equal to the white race which created the code of laws and the science of medicine. It may have required a thousand years for us to learn that which we can teach him in oae year, but the point is that the negro, in his native home, had just as much time and opportunity to evolve a civilization as we had, AND HE DID NOT DO IT. ....
"It should be significant to Dr. Washington that the only por tion of his race which has ever made any development is that which has the vast advantage of being sustained, encouraged, taught, led and coerced by the whites among whom they live.
"Not long ago a negro preacher whose self-appreciation was as great as that of Dr. Washington, went out to Liberia to subdue the heathen, in the home of the negro race.
"The heathen were not subdued, but the preacher was. He threw off his store clothes, gave a whoop, gathered up an armful of wives and broke for the woods; the "Call of the Wild" was too much for his newly soldered civilization.
"Now, I dont mean to say that Doctor Washington would re lapse, under similar circumstances; but when I hear him call his new race Afro-Americans and listen while he soberly tells them that they are superior to the whites, I beg that he will remember his kin across the sea, his brethren in Santo Domingo, the decadents of Li beria, and the tens of thouands of his race here in this country who devoutly believe in witch doctors, in ghosts, in the conjure bag, and in the power of one negro to undo another by the mysterious but invincible Trick.
"Remember this, Doctor, education is a good thing, but it never did, and never will, alter the essential character of a man or a race."
The reader has gained a far more accurate opinion of the Watsonian intellectual and temperamental make-up from the foregoing selections from his writings, than could have been conveyed in a commentary upon their author. Watson has put himself into his works. The True Tom Watson is sought to be revealed in this essay, a task that could never be accomplished save in reprinting the most characteristic portions of what this, the strangest and most in genious Georgian, has written.
In conversations with the present writer in the Watson home, and in correspondence extending over a period of 10 years, the Sage of McDuffie frequently epitomized his legislative ambitions. Lover of the West, and the supreme lover of the South, Watson was yet wholly American. At the same tune he was ultra-independent. Po
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litically, he loved no section of the country more than any other, though the burden of his labors was to free every section from party bossism. He gave the present writer a succinct statement of his great aim. Here it is:
"My dream has always been a political union between the agri cultural West and South, to combat the innate and indomitable federalism of the North and East, where financial, commercial and manufacturing interests will always secure special privilege from whatever party is in power."
Yet, Mr. Watson announced his intention to work in the United States Senate along very broad lines. He went to the Senate with no sectional feeling in his breast. His financial views, reflected in a leg islative program he formulated, flowed to the reform of conditions throughout the United States. In reply to those who have chal lenged his views as unsound, he cited the adoption of his principles, preached for years when they were unpopular, by both the old line parties. Federal loans to the farmer, he worked for three decades ago the system later adopted in the Federal Reserve Bank. Re vision downward of the tariff, he advocated, as a Populist, only to see the doctrine snapped up by the Democrats.
But the author would not close this essay without giving the reader a glimpse behind the curtain a view of the inner-Watson. What was the mainspring of his conviction; what the soul-ideal of the man? What was that heart passion denoting the true Tom Watson?
We revert to his idyll, The Glory That Was Greece. In ideal izing the purest type of manhood and womanhood the world ever saw, the highest-minded citizen, the truest-hearted man, the chast est woman, and withal the race which, as such, achieved the noblest ambitions, Mr. Watson found the inspiration for the expression of the holiest and deepest aspirations of his own soul. Here are his immortal words:
"One can imagine a Greek of Athens soliloquizing in this strain: "The world will never forget me; I will not wholly die; in what I conceived and wrought I shall live forever. Of immortality of the soul I know nothing. Hope yearns, but reason benumbs the hands. After all, I do not know. "Even should I arise from the dead to live again, in another world, what would I be, there; what would I do, there? Unless I could be much the same as here the same to feel and hope and love and work I would not care for it. The spirit which would be satisfied with perpetual rest, an eternity of fruitless bliss, would not be mine. Even if it were me and paradise meant idleness and perpetual peace and joy were it not better to choose that kind of immortality which is certain to be mine? "In my laws, arts, science, philosophy, social and political and
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literary models, I will survive the wreck of empires. Myriads of boys and girls, men and women, will drink at my fountain, to be come pure and strong. As long as time shall last, my work will multiply itself in the efforts of others; thus my immortality will be the uplifting of all the generations that follow me, rather than a selfish quietude in some beatific but unprogressive paradise. Wherever the orator shall speak with tongue of flame, I shall be heard; wherever the sculptor shall chisel beauty from sense less stone, I shall be seen; wherever warriors strike for liberty, poets embody truth and majesty in verse, statesmen evolve civilizations, and scholars and philosophers and scientists conquer new worlds, I shall be known and honored deathless in the divinity of inspired purpose and work.
" I alone have reared an altar to Mercy. I alone have based civil and religious institutions on the Brotherhood of Man. I alone have endeavored to poetize the loveliness and the grandeur of Na ture; no one else created dryads for murmuring groves and naiads for gurgling streams; no one else dreamed of making rural life Ar cadian, and elevating the harvest into the enchanted regions of poesy and religion. I alone have practiced the splendid creed that no head is so high that it shall not bow to law, and no fellow man so low that he shall not be the object of my care and protection.
" The career open to talent, the tools to him that can use them lo! I stamped that motto indelibly upon the Golden Age: 3000 years hence, a Gorsican boy, grown great, shall restamp it upon a for getting world.
" Immortal? Tea, I am immortal. I shall live, not one idle, blissful, unfruitful life in the eternity of the shades; but I shall live lustily, joyously, fruitfully, usefully, sublimely in all the years that are to come to this earth side by side with scholars as their shin ing faces tend upward to the higher summits of Thought, soul to soul with patriot statesmen who give their days and nights to the noble problems of just laws, healthy conditions, happy homes!"
Those who knew the inner-Watson, who came in personal con tact with him, were ever impressed with his zeal for principle. He never formed himself, his acts or purposes upon policy. For this reason, it was hard for some men to understand him. Men who were mere practical men, properly so-called, never understood him. Men who cannot feel never appreciate the man of ideaL And so was the Sage of McDuffie ever referring all that was represented to him to the high-ground of principle and morality. Thus, some men called him a fanatic; some, a bigot. He was neither. He* only loved his principles; that was alL
On the night of October 1, 1913, the author of this essay was a guest in Mr. Watsons home at Thomson. He had gone to see the
s*
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old war-horse of Jeffersonian Democracy for two reasons. One was of a literary nature, the other political. He told Mr. Watson that he had been requested, while on this visit, to ask the Sages aid for a South Georgia man who was running for Congress, and that this candidate had.asked him to point out that he was a friend of men Watson had backed, and an enemy of men Watson had fought; that, particularly, he had supported Joe Brown for Governor, as Mr. Wat son had done, and opposed Hoke Smith, Watsons bitter political enemy; and tie, therefore, felt free to ask Mr. Watsons help."
Quietly, but with that incisive emphasis, fully indicated in the penetration of his gaze, Watson said:
"Tell your man that neither he nor any other man can get my support by the political trick of lining up with my friends and fighting my enemies, bitter though the latter be. I grant my .support to none save those whose principles will bear the acid test of Jeffer sonian Democracy."
Many, at one time, had thought Watson was actuated only by personal motives. The truth is, he rarely, if ever, was. And that is the reason he changed his candidates so often. When they swerved one iota from the true track, the beaten path he had al ways stayed in, he dropped them. Thus arose the charge that "he turned his back on every man he ever supported." The implica tion of disloyalty was known to be false probably by those alone who knew the inner-Watson. They knew that his action was ever formed upon the principle which is the genius of the American con stitution and government: that this is a nation of law and not men.
And so the true Tom Watson was spiritual herein lay his mys terious power over the masses. Here was the reason why they loved him, instead of admiring, him. The power of that matchless elo quence which was his in his prime, under the spell of which men went wild with exhaltation, must be referred to something else than ora tory, because his very presence, his very smile, a glance of his, was enough to lift his hearers off their feet. And when he rose to speak, when he would raise his hands above his head before uttering a word, he would veritably raise his audience unconsciously to its feet not because of his intellect, not because of his gift of words; but because there emanated from him a mysterious power born of an exhalted spirit, which, itself, became a part of the very being of every person in his presence.
THE END.
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