But to my amazement he had stated it this way:

“I will pay it, but not now.”

Every one who was present must remember these words.

I said nothing at all in reply, but after all the others had retired, I remained behind and I reminded the Colonel courteously, of his pledge to pay me when I came to New York. I asked that he pay me at least HALF THE AMOUNT DUE.

He hung his head, for an instant only, and then, raising a flushed face, told me he would see what he could do, and give me a reply next day.

He complained of the heavy expense of his recent litigation, alluding of course to the celebrated Collier-Hapgood Libel Case and the subsequent prosecution of himself for perjury.

Next day he wrote me a long, sweet, persuasive letter begging me to wait on him until July, 1906, at which time he would most assuredly pay. It was then that I did what I should have done at first—consulted a New York lawyer.

Mr. Palliser advised me to make an end of the matter then, and I should have taken his advice; but I loved my work and my Magazine, and at the last moment I yielded and let Col. Mann have his own way.

From motives that he is unable to understand or appreciate, I would have continued the unpaid slave of the Magazine, indefinitely, had not he and DeFrance made the situation intolerable. I felt my obligations to the subscribers: my pride in the success of the Magazine which bore my name was deeply involved. This was well known both to Col. Mann and DeFrance, and they presumed, upon it—once too often.

***

It may be asked why I did not cut loose from the Town Topics gang after the exposures in the Collier-Hapgood Case. Simply because Col. Mann had nothing on earth to do with what I regarded as the Magazine, to wit—its policy, its purpose, its message. That was the life of the Magazine. That, in my eyes, was the Magazine.

I did not want to leave the subscribers in the lurch, nor did I want to abandon a field of labor in which I seemed to be doing a good work.

Every man who has a purpose in life and who loves his work, will understand me.

Therefore, when Clark Howell and others jumped on me for being connected with a person who was being denounced throughout the land as a blackmailer, I put the case on the strongest ground by saying, “I am the Magazine.” That was true. DeFrance and Mann were glad enough to have me check defection from the Magazine by saying it THEN.

In a very short while they will WISH THAT THEY HAD ANOTHER METHOD, EQUALLY GOOD, OF CHECKING DEFECTION. The subscribers to the magazine that was mine are not going to endorse what Col. Mann has done, nor remain with a magazine which HE controls—never in the world.

***

If Colonel Mann had not lost his senses, in his haste to grab the Magazine, name and all, he would have foreseen the utter folly of trying to run the thing in my name after I had gone out. A new Magazine, under a new name, he could establish at less expense than he will incur in the vain effort to maintain a Watson’s Magazine without Watson. A child ought to be able to see that. What possible good will my name be to him when he himself publishes the statement that I am out?

The name without the man will be a dead weight to the Magazine, as Col. Mann has, doubtless, begun to find out.

Honesty, in THIS case at least, should have been his POLICY. It would have paid him better in the long run.

Col. Mann rushed into court, got a judgment against the Magazine for $60,000; and sold it, at Sheriff’s sale, to himself.

He actually had the Sheriff to sell my name, and was ass enough to buy it.

But he didn’t buy me, along with the name, and he didn’t buy the spirit of the Magazine when he bought the desks, the iron-safe and the trade name.

The most valuable asset, he could not, and cannot reach.

That’s the Good Will, the Reputation, the Demand!

This is the real asset—THE ONLY ASSET WORTH HAVING.

This asset, in equity and good conscience, belongs to me, by the most sacred of all titles—THE WORKMAN’S RIGHT TO THE PRODUCT OF HIS LABOR.

Since it is mine, I mean to have it—in spite of all that Col. Mann may do.

***

“Explanatory” will seek in vain to convince any considerable number of people that I quit the Magazine on a mere question of salary.

That is the very thing that I always subordinated to other and higher considerations.

In some directions Col. Mann lavished money like a prince; in others, he doled it out like a miser.

Thus he squandered $12,000 in advertisements in daily newspapers, where they were not worth a hill of beans, and REFUSED TO FURNISH MONEY TO PAY ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY POSTAGE on sample copies.

He wasted $5,000 trying to run the advertising department on a fancy schedule, and refused to pay the Authors who supplied us with the necessaries of life. Sometimes the writers who had been so badly treated had to threaten attachments, before they could get their money; and upon one occasion DeFrance had to sneak out of the office to avoid an irate Author who had come upon the scene with the Riot Act in his hand.

Talk about me as the man who acted as if I wanted to “wreck” my namesake? What could damage the Magazine more surely and seriously than such management as this? We got a bad name among writers, because we took their MSS. and then failed to pay. We got a bad name among advertisers, because ads were inserted upon almost any terms. We got a bad name among subscribers, because DeFrance allowed business letters to go unanswered, and because Wm. Green, the Publisher, dribbled the mailing of every issue through TWO FULL WEEKS.

These were the difficulties with which I had to contend. The country is full of people who wanted to patronize us and befriend us and help us, but who became so disgusted at not getting their magazines, and not getting answers to their letters, that they simply quit us in despair.

Would DeFrance like to see a list of their names?

I can furnish him with a good long one.

***

On one occasion Col. Mann was eager to have me send a cablegram, through our State Department, to our Minister at St. Petersburg, offering a thousand dollars to Maxim Gorky—then in prison—for an article for the Magazine.

That very week I had to take the money out of my pocket to pay the girls who worked in the office.

Upon another occasion, he ordered the sale, AS JUNK, of 60,000 copies of the Magazine WHICH HAD ALREADY BEEN WRAPPED AND ADDRESSED AND MADE READY FOR MAILING AS SAMPLE COPIES. They were SOLD AS WASTE PAPER BECAUSE HE REFUSED TO FURNISH MONEY TO PAY POSTAGE.

Colonel Mann’s business was the publishing of magazines. Naturally, I assumed that he was an expert at that business. It never occurred to me that I could be of any service in the business management until his absurd mistakes forced themselves upon my attention.

The Collier trial seemed to establish the fact that his way of making money out of his other magazines was the systematic blackmailing of Society swells and Wall Street thieves.

When he stands his trial for Perjury in the case now pending, the world will doubtless learn other peculiarities which characterize his management of magazines.

***

I wanted the Magazine to be a success, and I knew that it could not succeed as then managed. Hence, my offer to continue, indefinitely, to work without compensation provided I were allowed to make those changes which I knew to be absolutely essential to final success.

To this effect I wrote to the Managing Editor, and to DeFrance. No reply was made by the management.

Then I overcame my repugnance to Col. Mann, and wrote him—telling him what ailed the Magazine, how it could be put on its feet and offering to make a success, of it—without salary in the meanwhile—if he would let me do it.

To my original conditions, however, I added another, namely, that DeFrance must go. After the way in which he had acted, and after the two insulting letters which he had written me, it was no longer possible for us to work together.

Col. Mann did not answer my letter at all.

He had DeFrance to telegraph me a request that I send the Editorials, and a promise that they would treat me right.

By having DeFrance send the message, I knew that he meant to keep DeFrance—and that let me out.

DeFrance had already notified me that half of my magazine belonged to him, and half to Col. Mann, and there was no arrangement that could be made on that basis.

Besides, Col. Mann, after my letter was written and before its receipt, by him, had rushed into the New York World with an interview which libelled me basely and cruelly.

***

Let me say, in justice to a most estimable gentleman, that I had no quarrel with Mr. Richard Duffy. He is peculiarly well fitted to make a first-class editor of a literary magazine. His standards are high and his judgment sound. He was not, however, particularly suited to a political magazine—never having devoted any special study to Political Economy and Governmental questions. In my contemplated change in the Editorial Staff, I was not actuated by any dislike of Mr. Duffy. My motive was simply that of the mariner who sacrifices a portion of his cargo to save his ship.

***

“Explanatory” makes as much as possible out of the weekly cheque of $125, sent to me “during the busy part of the subscription season.”

Yes, they sent me cheques to the amount of one thousand dollars, at a time when subscriptions were pouring in at the rate of two and three thousand per week.

But “Explanatory” does not state the fact that nine thousand dollars represents the amount of unpaid honest, hard work done by me on the Magazine and that Col. Mann told the newspaper reporters, brazenly, that HE NEVER INTENDED TO PAY A RED CENT OF IT.

Perhaps, the sum-total paid me during the two years would cover my actual expense-account in working for the Magazine. It certainly would not do more than that.

***

“Explanatory” dwells upon my ceasing to visit New York, once a month.

Drawing no salary, paying my own traveling expenses, and being made more or less ill by each of these long trips, I discontinued them. Editorials for a monthly magazine can be written down here in Georgia just about as well as in New York, and postage stamps cost less than railroad tickets.

Everything that I was allowed to do for the Magazine could be done just as well by mail as by personal presence.

As to refusing to make a final trip to seek “an amicable adjustment,” I wrote to DeFrance that the proposition referred to already WAS MY LAST WORD, and that there was no use in my coming to New York to say it again. Col. Mann could accept or reject—I was not going there to listen to any more of his coaxing, bluffing and lies.

Besides, to tell the whole truth, I was not sorry that the time had come when I could cut loose from this fat rascal. After I had worked on and on; after he had broken promise upon promise; after he had sued the Magazine for $60,000 and got an execution against it; after he had shown that he wanted me to continue indefinitely to do ten times as much work as the contract called for, and to never have any share in the reward that might be reaped from my labors; after he had broken the contract by dismissing my son from a position which was my personal appointment; after he had rushed into the newspapers and confirmed my suspicion of his villainous purpose by revealing his utter and shameless disregard for his contracts, THEN my conscience and my judgment concurred in the decision to cut loose from the New York concern and START A MAGAZINE OF MY OWN.

***

Not a second thought have I given to the loss of the $9,000. But THAT wasn’t all. Col. Mann assailed me. The odium of a catastrophe which was the result of his own folly, faithlessness and lack of honor, he tried to cast upon me. In his efforts to escape universal contempt, he lied like a bulletin.

Betrayed by one whom I selected as my personal representative in the office and whom I advanced from Circulation Clerk to Business Manager; accused of a mismanagement which I endeavored in vain to correct; held up to public criticism for mistreatment of employes when I had never uttered an unkind word to a single one of them, high or low, during the whole time of my service, and when I had never made a change in the force that was not sanctioned in advance, by Colonel Mann himself, I now feel that burning sense of the injustice and outrage which any other man of spirit would feel under the same circumstances.

***

With an effrontery which nothing could surpass, the two men who have seized my magazine on the half and half plan are mailing out a circular letter begging Reformers to take shares in the stock of the new Company.

This circular carries Deception on its very face. It purports to hail from “2 West 40th Street.”

What is “2 West 40th Street”?

Why, it is the side-door to the notorious Town Topics den into which DeFrance and Col. Mann have dragged the corpse of “Watson’s Magazine.”

The FRONT of Col. Mann’s trap is on Fifth Avenue.

Now DeFrance and Mann knew very well that there wasn’t a decent man in America who would knowingly send a dollar to buy stock of Col. Mann at the Town Topics address. Hence in their efforts to lure pigeons into the net, they use the side-door address which no one who is not familiar with the building would ever know to be the same building.

Oh, the shame of it, DeFrance! And YOU were the man whom I selected AS MY PERSONAL REPRESENTATIVE IN THE OFFICE, and who telegraphed me to Fort Lauderdale last winter urging me to resist Col. Mann’s removal of the Magazine to the Town Topics building!

With pathetic insistence, they are sending out this circular letter from this Town Topics Side-Entrance addressed,

“Dear Friend.”

I wonder how many dear friends Col. Mann imagines himself to possess.

I wonder how many of DeFrance’s dear friends will follow him into that Mann-hole.

The letter makes the modest request that a few thousand ardent admirers of DeFrance buy stock in the Side-Door concern at $10 per share.

DeFrance tearfully ejaculates, “I don’t ask you to donate the Money. Far from it.”

How far from it, he doesn’t say. The confiding individual who bites at that bait, and pours ten dollars into that Mann-hole will see a good deal of ice in August before he will ever see his money again.

Think of the impudent falsehood of the assertion made in this circular letter:

“The magazine, while not yet profitable, has nearly reached that point.” Therefore, send your money to the Side-Door concern right away. Yet, in the next breath, he claims that Col. Mann lost $180,000 in less than two years on the Magazine.

To cap the climax of his wrong-doing, DeFrance actually signs the Begging Letter as Secretary of the People’s Party National Committee.

By what right?

Under whose authority does he act when he thus prostitutes that office to the service of Col. W. D. Mann?

What will our National Committee think of it when they behold their Secretary standing at the Side Door of the Town Topics building and hear him calling for Populists to walk up and enter the Mann-hole, to the tune of “Ten Dollars admission fee, please”?

DeFrance has now stooped to do the very thing that Col. Mann tried vainly to get me to do.

***

I wonder if those New York rascals really thought that I would quietly sit down and twiddle my thumbs while they were making off with “Watson’s Magazine”? I wonder if it never entered into those heads, which were bent together to plot and to scheme, that the consequence of their pretty little game MIGHT be a Revolt of Watson and HIS FRIENDS.

Unless I am greatly mistaken, the subscribers to “Watson’s Magazine” are Mr. Watson’s friends, and THEY ARE GOING TO STAND BY HIM. We shall see.

***

After all, why worry over it? Life is too short to waste many of its precious hours upon such a theme. Looked at in one way, those who thought to crush me have done me a service.

They have put into me, once more, that intensity of energy and purpose which, otherwise, might never have been mine again. What the spur is to the thoroughbred, what the bugle-call is to the cavalier, the recent attempts of my enemies to compass my ruin has been to me.

By the living God! Here is no thought of surrender, no weakness of doubt or hesitation, but a resolution, fixed as hardened steel, to MARCH ON.

What! Be a quitter NOW? Falter or flicker NOW? Lower the flag and stack arms, NOW?

Rather, would I die.

The ear of the world is at last inclined to us, and the heart of mankind is at length being touched by our message.

The long march of the despised Reformer is nearing its end. His final triumph no sane observer, no watchman upon the tower, can longer doubt.

Halt NOW? Never in the world.

Desert NOW? Heaven forbid!

Why, for fifteen years we have walked amid the shadows of social and political ostracism, never swerving an inch from the rocky road of Duty—do they think we shall walk less firmly now, when the sunlight is falling upon the path?

Times have changed. Men have changed. The principles for which we fought have not changed. They have conquered.

The strong man and shrewd politician at the White House laid his attentive ear to the ground, quite a while ago, and heard distant rumblings that taught him useful lessons.

The strong man and shrewd politician at Fair View, Nebraska, has had his attentive ear to the ground and he, likewise, has learned his lesson.

The next time Mr. Watson of Georgia goes to Nebraska for the purpose of helping Mr. Bryan to carry his home State for Reform, I venture the prediction that Mr. Bryan will not leave Nebraska to avoid contact with Mr. Watson—as he did in 1896.

The battle-flag of a great people, inspired by a resistless purpose to assert the right of THE INDIVIDUAL to wrest the government of the country out of the hands of the MONSTER CORPORATION will, beyond all possible doubt, be inscribed with those mottoes which for fifteen years have been our watchwords in the fight and our solace in defeat.

Courage, Comrades—Courage! And Forward March!

***

On this mellow, radiant, opulent day of Indian Summer—when the golden hours step quietly by, leading November into the dim realms which we call the Past—I write these lines; and, having done so, cast behind me that ugly dream, my New York experience.

Betrayed, I will trust again, AND GO ON. Better ten thousand treacheries than loss of faith in my fellow man. Repulsed, I will rally, re-form, and CHARGE AGAIN. Better a hundred defeats than one capitulation.

***

In March 1898, the Populists nominated me for Governor of Georgia. In declining to make the race, my decision was controlled by the fact that our organization had been wrecked by the Traitors who controlled our National Committee, that I myself was exhausted—mentally, physically, financially—and that Populism must henceforth do its work as A LEAVEN TO THE LOAF.

The fatal Fusion of 1896 had done our organization deadly damage, and the Spanish War finished us.

The blare of the bugle drowned the voice of the Reformer. With the Cannon-boom shaking the world, men had no ear for Political economy—or economy of any other sort.

Roosevelt rushed into war paint, and leaped into fame.

Bryan stuck a feather in his cap, and vowed that he, too, would become a soldier in spite of those vile guns.

Hearst, also, went as close to the enemy as McKinley would let him.

How could I talk economics with any prospect of success at such a time?

Loathing the war, foreseeing many of the evil consequences that it has brought upon us, I quit the active agitation of Populism, and shut myself up in my library to write books. But if any soldier of the Southern Confederacy carried away from Appomattox a heavier heart than I took with me into my enforced retirement, it would have been a merciful dispensation of Providence had the Eternal Sleep taken that soldier into her cold, white arms.

What I suffered during those awful years is known to none but the wife who shared my lot and the God who gave me strength to endure it.

***

To continue a hopeless fight with a broken-down organization was not the part of wisdom. The thing to do was to wait, educate the people, let events demonstrate that we had been right, and let the Spirit of Populism enter into and inspire the leaders of other parties.

I knew that OUR PRINCIPLES would finally triumph—as to THE PARTY, that was a secondary consideration.

In taking leave of my comrades in 1898, before quitting the field to go back into the court-house to earn money to pay pressing debts, here is what my letter said to them:

“Let no man believe that I despair of your principles, for I do not. You stand for the yearning, upward-tendency, of the middle and lower classes. You stand where the reformer has always stood; for improvement, for beneficial changes, for recognition of human brotherhood in its highest sense, for equality before the law, and for an industrial system which is not based upon the right of the strong to pillage the weak. You stand as sworn foes of monopoly—not monopoly in the narrow sense of the word—but monopoly of power, of place, of privilege, of wealth, of progress.

“You stand knocking at the closed door of privilege, as the reformer has ever done, and saying to those within, ‘Open wide the doors! Let all who are worthy, enter. Let all who deserve, enjoy. Form no conspiracy against the unborn. Shut out no generations that are to be. God made it all for all. Put no barrier around the good things of life, around the high places of church or state. Make no laws which foster inequality. Establish no Caste. Legalize no robbery under the name of taxes. Give to no person natural or artificial sovereign powers over his fellow men. Open, open wide the doors! Keep the avenues of honor free. Close no entrance to the poorest, the weakest, the humblest. Say to ambition everywhere, the field is clear, the contest fair, come and win your share if you can!’

“Such is Populism. Such is its glorious Gospel. As such, I have loved it with boundless reverence. As its disciples, I have loved you, fought for you, toiled for you, never for one moment doubting that you were right, and that your creed was the same immortal creed which in all ages has challenged wrong, and defied oppression.”

***

Trample the Truth as rudely as you may, even in her death struggle her voice is heard to say:

“I will come again.”

In the darkest hours of the past, when all seemed lost and the weaklings, the timeservers, the fickle minded and the mercenaries were fleeing to cover, I used to say, constantly, confidently, “Courage, friends. Be firm. Don’t lose heart. It will all come right.

“Populism, as a party, may seem to be dead, but the Spirit is immortal. It cannot die. As sure as God lives,

“It will come again.”

And now, after many days, in God’s own time, it HAS come again. From the bottom of my heart and from yours, come thanks to the Lord of the Universe who spared our lives to see this day.

And the purpose to which every energy I possess shall be devoted, henceforth, is to help those whom the people commission to bring about Reform.

As to Reward, I seek none, expect none, save that of the Inner Voice which says,

Well Done.

With this glance into the Past, necessary to you, as well as to me, let us turn our backs to it, and face the Future—and let us WORK, as we never worked before.

Editorials.

Lead us gently, Father Time, as you take us to the portals of the New Year.

We know not what may be within; and our souls are burdened with fear as we stand here at the door.

Lost, forever lost, is the Confidence with which we used to go bounding into the New Year—as revellers hasten to the feast.

We have met the Unforeseen so often, have mourned where we thought to rejoice, been trampled upon amid the horrors of panic and defeat where we had so stoutly fought for victory and reward, that our hearts are sadly subdued, Father Time.

***

We did not SEEK this awful life-woe, Father Time.

Thrust, from some great outer darkness, into the hurly burly called Life, we gaze upward at the stars in helpless ignorance of what it all may mean; and some Irresistable Force pushes us, pushes us, swiftly, inexorably, onward to another outer darkness that fills us with speechless awe.

***

Have mercy on us, Father Time. We have been beaten with many stripes, and are covered with many wounds.

God! How we have suffered!

We knew nothing at the beginning, and we know but little now; and, for every lesson that we have learned, we have been made to pay in heart-aches and scalding tears.

Always struggling, often down, always anxious for the Morrow, often in torture Today, we have stumbled forward, Father Time, still looking for the smooth road and the sunny sky and the bright Companionship of Success and Peace.

Shall we NEVER see Carcassonne, Father Time?

***

We shudder when we think of what you did to us during the Old Year, Father Time.

Ah, but you were hard on us—bitter hard. Our little ones panted for a breath of fresh air, Father Time; and they died like flies, in noisome, reeking, crowded tenements, because there was not, in all God’s Universe—where there’s light and air for every flower that flecks the field—a breath of fresh air for the little children of the slums.

Ah, it was pitiful, Father Time!

Our feeble ones, young and old, perished miserably of cold and hunger, in the midst of a land that worships the Good God, and amid such an accumulation of wealth as was never known before since the Morning stars looked down upon a newly-made world.

Poverty, Crime, Vice, Drunkenness, Riot, War, Famine, Pestilence, Earthquake, Conflagration have glutted their awful appetites upon us during the Old Year, Father Time. To WHAT are you leading us in the New?

Will the heart of the world grow harder and harder, Father Time?

Will the greed of human avarice demand still larger sacrifice of human lives?

Will the Selfishness of Class gorge itself still further upon ravenous conquest, and remorseless exploitation?

Shall the cry of the White Slave NEVER reach Heaven, Father Time?

Shall the song of the angels who hung over the infant Christ, NEVER throb, a living principle, in man’s government of man?

Is the Reformer always to be the Martyr, Father Time?

Is Wrong NEVER to be dethroned?

***

Oh, Father Time! We tremble as we feel you leading us toward the door of the New Year. Beyond that portal we cannot see, and we dread it—as children dread the dark.

Deal gently with us in the New Year, Father Time.

Give us strength to bear the Cross—for we know that we must bear it.

Give us courage for the battle, for we know that we must fight it.

Give us patience to endure, for we know that we shall need it.

Give us Charity that thinks not evil of the Just, and which will stretch forth the helpful hand to lift our weaker Brother out of the mire, rather than the cruel scorn which passes him by, or thrusts him further down.

Give us Faith in the Right which no defeat can disturb, no discouragement undermine.

Give us the Love of Truth which no temptation can seduce and no menace intimidate.

Give us the Fortitude which, through the cloud and the gloom and the sorrow of apparent Failure, can see the distant pinnacles upon which the everlasting sunlight rests.

Give us the Pride which will suffer no contamination, no compromise of self-respect, no wilful desertion of honest conviction.

Give us the Purpose that never turns and the Hope that never dies.

And, Father Time, should the New Year, into which you are taking us, have upon its calendar that day in which the few who love us shall be bowed down in sackcloth and ashes, let THAT day, like all the other days, find us ON DUTY—faithful unto the end.

Mr. Bryan and Mr. Watson.

When I was in Nebraska in 1904 Mr. Bryan showed me every courtesy; therefore, it was most appropriate for me to reciprocate at the first opportunity. When Mr. Bryan reached the State of Georgia, during his recent tour of the South, I wrote him a note which he gave to the press, and which our readers have doubtless seen.

Not long afterwards the following personal acknowledgement was received:

***

Mr. Bryan says: “It is gratifying to know from what I have learned that we are going to be able to act together in the coming contest.”

Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see the National Democratic party undergo a general casting out of the unclean spirits that have taken possession of it. If it should become truly Democratic, if it should return to the principles of the fathers, if it should renounce Hamilton and all his works, if it should rebaptize itself in the creed of Jefferson, if its National organization should expel every tool of the Trusts, every agent of Wall street, every beneficiary of special Privilege—then the Democratic party would stand for substantially the same things as The People’s Party.

That being so, why should we not be able “to act together?”

Party names are nothing. Principles are everything. True reformers think more of having the work done than of getting the credit. Many Populists condemned me in 1905 for advising them to support Hoke Smith for Governor of Georgia. No Populist condemns me now. Everybody realizes that there are more Populists in Georgia today than there ever were before.

Read once more the strong, manly letter which Hoke Smith wrote for the first issue of the Weekly Jeffersonian, and then remember that thirteen years ago the writer was a member of Cleveland’s Cabinet—then you will realize how immensely the man has grown.

Well, his Democratic followers have grown with him, and we Jeffersonians vastly outnumber the moss-backs throughout the State of Georgia.

***

As Mr. Bryan says, a great change is coming over the people. Doctrines which were scouted a few years ago are shouted now. Radicals who were hooted, howled down and rotten-egged a few years ago are getting bouquets now. The Hearst editorials and speeches read like Populist harangues of 1892. The Bryan platform of 1906 embraces what was considered the wildest plank of the People’s Party platform of 1891.

“Act together,” William? Why not—if you take our principles for your creed and reorganize your old party to fit your new faith?

***

That all true reformers may find a way to “act together” is a consummation devoutly to be wished. A conference between Bryan, Hearst and myself for that purpose was suggested immediately after the election of 1904, but neither Mr. Bryan nor Mr. Hearst seemed to approve.

What may happen between now and 1908 no one can foretell, but I am still hoping that some honorable plan may be hit upon which will enable all true-hearted reformers to “act TOGETHER” and overthrow this fearful system which enables the privileged few to plunder the unprivileged many.

Socialism at War with Love of Home and Country.

In a recent issue of a leading Socialist paper the following gem of thought is to be found:

“‘Patriotism’ is a nickname for ‘Prejudice.’”

Do you know why the Socialist flouts patriotism and calls it prejudice?

Think a little, and you will see. You love your country because your home is a part of it; and you love your home because it is your individual haven of refuge from the storms of life—the individual kingdom in which you are lord and master and in which you enjoy, with your wife, your children, and your friends, whatever happiness life can give.

The man never lived who would NOT fight for his home—HOWEVER HUMBLE.

The man never lived who would fight for the tenement house in which he chances to be a lodger. The home is ever sacred—the hotel never is. The reason is plain enough. The home is yours, individually; the hotel is everybody’s generally. Now, the Socialist strikes at individualism. He doesn’t want to own your home by any title that gives you individual control of it. He wants everybody’s home to belong to you, and your home to belong to everybody. In other words, the homes of the people are to be owned collectively. If society sees fit to say to you “Move on,” out you go. Society will substitute its title for your title, its will for your will, its control for your control. The home that Socialism will permit you to use this year may be allotted to some one else another year.

Under these conditions no man would love his home any more than he would love his room in a hotel. Under these conditions, the citizen would have no greater inducement to make permanent improvements upon his home, than he would have to make improvements upon the hotel.

Love of home being destroyed, love of country would also be destroyed. Patriotism, being founded upon love of home, would perish under Socialism, for the simple reason that the foundations would be gone. Under Socialism, the most beautiful feature of civilized life would disappear. Home life, as we know it, would be impossible. The song of “Home, Sweet Home,” would thrill no responsive chords in the human heart. The tender pathos of Burns’ “Cotter’s Saturday Night,” would not be felt. Socialism would answer with a universal YES, Sir Walter Scott’s ringing challenge,