Newspapers / The Caucasian (Clinton, N.C.) / Oct. 6, 1904, edition 1 / Page 1
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THE .Ent Ml erprise VOL. I. RALEIGH, N. C, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 6, 1904. NO. 25 WATSON AT NEWTON. Populist Nominee for President Hakes An Original Speech It was Univer sally Approved Description of "The Man of the Hour." The editor of the Enterprise spent Monday at Newton. The object of this visit was to see and hear Hon. Thomas E. Watson, and to mingle with the good people of Catawba County, that great body of fertile land which lies at the foot of the Alleghanies. There was business in it, too, and the result was that a large number of Catawba people, and a few from adjoining counties, will be regular readers of this paper in the future. A large crowd was pres ent. : . We heard Thomas E. Watson speak twelve years ago. He is the same man, only more finished, more bril liant. We arranged for a stenographic report of the speech and had hoped to give it word for word as spoken. But the stenographer failed to get all of the speech and Mr. Watson de clined to permit the publication un til he can revise it and add the sen tences and points that escaped the stenographer. Mr. Watson speaks rapidly and never makes the same speech twice that is, not in the same words. Mr. J. 0. McNeill, the origi nal and brilliant writer on the Char lotte Observer, was disappointed in failing to" get the speech in full. But he had made some notes and got up a good report of the speech for his paper. We will use his report in preference to our own account, as he is not supposed to be biased in favor of Mr. Watson, though he is now an ardent admirer of the man. Mr. McNeill thus reports some of the speech and gives his impressions of Mr. Watson by way of intrpduction: "This reported has cried wolf so often and has been so free of eulogis tic language that he fears it will be impossible to excite or impress the people, now that he has encountered the biggest wolf that ever he en countered before. "Mr. Thomas E. Watson is not fairly represented in the pictures of him. He is not a large man, but of good proportions. He is well groom ed and wears his clothes well. His face is full of healthful color. His jaws fit together firmly, and his sensi tive red lips are expressive. He has that cut of nostril, thin and shape ly, which sometimes means pride and always courage. His brownish yellow hair is thick and shocks over his forehead when he speaks. His eye is large and beautiful, and when he smiles the lower lid comes up and half conceals it. "He stood here to-day and spoke for an hour and a half, extempornne ously, and his language was classic and his thought as clear as sunshine. He is not a strenuous speaker, but the most persuasive, the most engag ing and entertaining that I have ever heard." "When we were schoolboys," he. be gan, "we made this speech: 'Tll nfllra fmm little acorns ctow. Large streams from little fountains flow7' :,,-r He exDounded this thought in gol den words, and added, by way of il lustration, that "the great Mu!hrdit Church, which has carried its white flag wherever the sun shines, once comprised only John Wesley, Charles Wesley and George Whitfield ; and the great Baptist Church, the sim plicity of whose government and teaching I so much admire, was long confined to the mountain recesses of Italy and France, biding its time to shed its light upon the world." The application will be obvious. John W. Daniel said at the St. Louis convention, "I'm tired of being in the minority. If he was wrong he might well be tired of it; if his conscience was not clear, he might be tired of it ; but majorities and minorities why should a man whose object is truth and who believes in the princi ples he stands for consider them ? "Talk about throwing away your vote the only vote you ever throw away is the vote cast in violation of right." . -. He said he was appealing to straight-out, middle of the road Pop ulists "And if you hear my gospel, said he, "and believe it, you are a coward if you do not vote for me. This is putting it straight. If you cringe at the crack of the party lash, if you fear unpopularity or loss of business, if you let any consideration compel you to vote against your con science, you are no brave man!" THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. The Republican party, he said, stands for class legislation, for the few as against the many. Everybody lenows what it stands for. "Of its candidate, Theodore Roosevelt, I will say that he's a brave man ; he's every inch a man. Now tear me to pieces!" This he said with a smile. "But I think - he's wrong from his head to his heels, and. I am against him from a to izzard, from Dan to Beersheba. "But he is a bold, open, defiant an tagonist. You know where he is. You could find him in the dark. I would that I might fight him alone. I might whip him. He might whip me; but when he went home his wife would say, "Teddy, who has had a hold of you?" He briefly traced the history of the opposing parties, showing how Dem ocracy was outspoken against Kepub lican principles from Jefferson to Bryan. "But now," said he, "when we are in the last quarter of the race, when each jockey is plying his whip on both sides and spurring for life, no man has been able to make Alton B Parker say where he differs from Roosevelt in principle. "Judge Parker," he said, "is the meekest fighter I ever saw go into the ring. . . . Roosevelt says that when the Philippines get ready for independent government, he is going to give it to them ; Parker savs when they are quite prepared for it they shall have it. "Both say they will prosecute ille gal trusts, but they furnish no list of the criminals. Both aeree that the tariff needs revision, but wherein thev say not. ' "Would he ever whip Roosevelt that way? The only way to whip a man is to fight him. You will never whip the Republican party until you get a fighter, lor the itepubiican par tv is headed by a fighter." The two parties do not differ as to imnerialism. We won the rhihp pines aq the spoils of war, and yet Mr. Bryan went to Washington and used his personal influence for the passage of the treaty of Paris, where by, after having already won the is lands, we paid $20,000,000 for them. "That is what put imperialism on us." Democratic votes were neces sary to its passage. The parties united in it. THE NEGRO ISSUE. Mr. Watson dwelt on the race ques tion. His face wore a winning smile. His voice has a subtle quality, sug gesting reserve power; and when he let it fall at his periods, there was something in it so sweet, so persua sive, that you can understand it only when you hear it. It seemed that he had extended his personality to his audience. While he was discussing straight political topics, making no effort at pathos or eloquence, I saw hundreds of eyes swimming in tears from no other cause than the mental excitement. I never saw people listen in this rapt way before. The little, quiet-mannered man stood there, making few gestures, not often rais ing his voice to a high pitch, not a hint of perspiration about him, but his very calmness was the calmness of strength. But I am straying from the negro issue. "I presume," said he, "that I am in a Democratic stronghold. I am in good humor, and I trust you are. However widely we may differ on other things, on this we are togeth er; we are all white men and we would die for the white man's su premacy." "Mr. Roosevelt dined Booker Washington. I shouldn't have done it if I had been he. If I'm President I won't do it. But you know how Roosevelt stands ; I have told you how I stand; tell me now how Parker stands ?" ':;-:i": "You are the sovereigns and you have a right to know. I am the only one of the candidates who has thought enough of the people to come down among them and tell them face to face where I stand. Judge Parker is silent on this subject ; and when ever he speaks out he differs from Roosevelt in nothing, except he would like to have Roosevelt's place." He woke the house into thunders of applause, when he said, "Oh, if I had more time so that I might reach the people, Parker would have to get out of the way, the gold Democrats would rally behind the Republicans, and the great Jeffersonian Democrats behind a man who is not afraid to fight!" The Democrats, he said, are, as us ual, making great thunder out of the negro. "If they should wake up some morning and find the negro gone they would feel like the old cow that had lost her cud." And yet Grover Cleveland, as Gov ernor, signed the bill providing for mixed schools in New York, thus making social equality or ignorance inevitable for the poorer classes. "When I asked Mr. Parker, through the Associated Press, in papers which he must have seen, whether he would do the same thing, he did not answer and he has not answered yet. When he writes to a negro, how does he head the letter ? 'Sir ?' No. 'Dear Sir?' No. He heads it 'My Dear- Sir,' the words in which one gentle man, one friend, addresses another, "Mr. Parker is an Eastern Yankee I am a Southern man." Here Mr Watson raised his voice to its height leant out over the erowd, and the scene was thrilling: "Southern in blood, Southern in ancestry, South ern insentiment and in deathless de votion to the best interests of the South!" "Why will you vote against a Southern man who tells you flat-f oot- edly before the election that he is with you, and for an Eastern Yankee who will not speak out except to a negro, "My Dear Sir V I am with you on the race question, and I'm a Jeffersonian Democrat from my head to my heels, and if you are a Jeffer sonian Democrat you must vote for me, or" the rest of the sentence was drowned in applause, not so much I took it, of the sentiment as of the oratory. THE POPULIST PLATFORM. After he set forth the reforms of the banking system proposed by his party, he continued : "What Jefferson said, what Jackson said, what Bryan said, I say. But the Democrats don't dare say it now they have sold out to the national bankers. "I am preaching the same doctrine now that I preached when I used to come to North Carolina to help our venerated chief, L. L. Polk. It fills me with sorrow that he is not here to welcome me. He loved me as a son, and I him as a father, and with his dying breath, in Washington, he blessed me." During his discussion of the in come tax, said he : "Theodore Roose velt could swallow Parker's platform without batting his eye, and Parker could waltz barefooted over Roose velt's and never get a splinter in his foot." v..:v.. "Let the people own the railroads," said he. "That's good Jeffersonian Democracy. . . . Henry Clay said, when the first Morse telegraph wires were being strung, that the govern ment ought to own the telegraph. The telegraph ought to be a part of the postal system. "Oh, but you say, He's wild.' "When I stood up in Congress and advocated that the mails should be distributed to the country people, I was laughed at. Now 40,000 men arc employed in the rural free delivery of mail; and $26,000,000 expended. I have offered to give $1,000 and I'm able to do it, thank God ! to any one who will show that I was not the orig inator of the rural free delivery of mails." He cited The Congressional Record for February 17, 1893. No one can understand how im pressive it was when he said, conclud ing this subject, "After I had been counted out and was not to be a Congressman any more. I remem beredyou ; and now, since you have the opportunity, are you going to remember me?" He said this with his hands out stretched to the people. The beauty of it was all in the way in which it was said and done. There was not a ripple of applause, but tears were on many a cheek. It was the man's wonderful presence. That was a splendid flight of ora tory on the employment of children in factories: Now the South, with all its chivalry and humanity, winks at this thing, and the North, protecting its own children by statute, invests its capital in Southern mills where it can employ Southern children. "And we bow down to the Christ who (Continued on Page 7.)
The Caucasian (Clinton, N.C.)
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Oct. 6, 1904, edition 1
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