Southern Mercury. (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 20, No. 8, Ed. 1 Thursday, February 22, 1900 Page: 1 of 16
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4. '
VoLXX Na 8.
DALLAS, TEXAS, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1900.
Annum
M BUZtD MIS ND.
FUSION MEETS ITS DEATH AT
THE LINCOLN MEETING.
31
Editorial Correspondence.
Lincoln, Neb. Feb. 19.—The expected
bas happened. In the temporary or-
ganization of the Populist National
Committee at its meeting here today,
Butler's manipulators adopted the lat-
est approved Goebel tactics, threw off
the committee, as votes as they
wished and whojn thsyi wished, and
tried to run things in a most high-
handed manner. They were outwitted,
however, and a majority of the Nat-
ional Committee, represented in per-
son and by proxy, succeeded in reorg-
anizing the committe on straight Pop-
ulist lines and proceeded to issue a
call for a national convention. Cincin-
nati, Ohio, was selected as the place,
and May 9 chosen as the time. A com-
mittee of live, consisting of Jo A.
Parker of Kentucky, Robt. McRey-
nolds of Nebraska, Alii Reed of Iowa,
J. B. Osborne of Georgia, and R. H.
H. Wheeler of Ohio, were appointed
to draft an address to the voters of
the nation, explaining the situation.
Here is the address:
This committee, after careful thought
and deliberation, submitted the follow-
ing, which was unanimously adopted:
To the Members o fthe People's party
and to the Independent Voters of
the United States:
For many months it has been evident
that designing persons were determin-
ed to rule the People's party in the
interests of the organized Democracy;
that the chosen leaders and afficials of
our party thought more of the success
of the Democratic party than they did
our own, than they did of the welfare
and upbuilding of the People's party.
While we have in the past been loth
to take this view of the matter, recent
events have been such that there is
no longer any doubt of the aims of
thes false leaders, and that if the Peo-
ple's party is to live it must be taken
in control by the people of the party,
and the disloyal leaders turned out of
its councils.
We have hoped that this matter
could be postponed to the meeting of
a national convention, but the occur-
ences of the past few hours at this
city, Lincoln, Neb., during the meet-
ing of the national committee of our
party have made it imperative that
the people delay no longer, but act be-
fore their party is destroyed.
There comes times in all ages and
under all conditions when men who
have been associated together can no
longer asm, and in the national com-
mittee of the People's party that time
was reached on February 19, when by
arbitrary and unjust ruling certain
populist officials who had been by the
people intrusted with leadership and
control sought to repay that trust with
perfidy and political chicanery unheard
of in the course and management of
reform parties heretofore.
Before entering upon a detailed
statement of the outrageous proceed-
ings we consider it well to recount cer-
tain matters leading directly up to the
points at issue.
In December, 1899, several members
of the national committee representing
Southern states met at Memphis,
Tenn., to consider the best plan of pro-
cedure to secure action by the national
committee. The result of that confer-
ence was that a committee consisting
of W. S. Morgan of Arkansas; M. W.
Howard of Alabama and Jo A Parker
of Kentucky were appointed to corre-
spond with members of the national
committee and ask them to sign a re-
quest upon Chmn. Butler to call
a meeting of the National Com-
mittee at Chicago, Illinois, on
February 12. Jo A. Parker was
selected as secretary of that commit-
tee, and sent to all the members of the
committee blank forms addressed to
Senator Butler as chairman of the nat-
ional committee, embodying the
proposition to meet at Chicago on
February 12. On Dec. 21, Mr. Park-
er in person presented to Sena-
tor Butler at his residence in Wash-
ington sixty-nine of said petitions, em-
bacing a majority of the committee.
Chmn.Butler refused to recognize these
petitions, saying that the had already
sent out to the members of the com-
mittte a letter asking their votes on
the time and place of holding the meet-
ing. However, this communication did
no reach many committee members till
late in January; some did not receive
it until the formal call had been is-
sued; while many members of the
committee never received it all, nor
did they receive any notification what-
soever of the meeting of the commit-
tee. And when the date and place of
holding the meeting of the committee
were fixed,the wishes of the sixty-nine
members who had petitioned Chairman
Butler were utterly ignored, and on
the vote of a small minority of the
committee the meeting was called for
Lincoln, Neb., on February 19.
So unfair was the location of the
meeting at this point regarded by
many members of the committee that
they resolved to stay away, as it was
plainly to be seeen that the meeeting
was placed at Lincoln for the purpose
of giving the Bryan, faction of the com.
(Continued on 12th page.)
dAT MI-TRUST (HTML
SPEAKS OUT, BUT REFUSES TO
BACK UP ITS PLATFORM.
Editorial correspondence.
The delegates to the great Anti-Trust
Convention began to gather at the
Central Music Hall in Chicago early
Monday morning, February 12, as ad-
vertised, and by the time President M.
L. Lockwood, who has been at the
head of the Anti-Trust League since
its organization, called the meeting to
order. There was quite an attend-
ance. The faces of many very prom-
inent men were to be seen, some of
them Democrats, some Republicans,
and, once in a while, a lonesome Pop-
ulist or Socialist was to be seen. It
was evident from the beginning that
the radical reformers were not to con-
trol the convention.
Presiden Lockwood called the con-
vention to order, and delivered a short
address explaining the purposes of the
gathering. President Lockwood said:
"Twenty-eight years ago there gath-
ered at the little town of Franklin, just
as we have gathered here, the repre-
sentatives of the five ail-producing
counties of Western Pennsylvania;
gathered to protest, aye, and to revolt
against that infamous thing known as
the South Improvement Co.'s contract
with the five trunk railway companies.
That contract gave to the men who af-
terwards created the Standard Oil Co.
a rebate or drawback of more than one
dollar a barrel upon every barrel of
oil shipped from the oil regions of
Pennsylvania, whether shipped by the
South Improvement Co., or not. In
other words, the railway companies
contracted to take more than one dol-
lar a barrel from the independent pro-
ducers and refiners of Pennsylvania, in
excessive freights and transfer it into
the coffers of the South Improvement
Co. The people of the Oil regions of
Pennsylvania went into revolt and de-
fied this railroad power. They de-
clared that the equal rights of the peo-
ple should not be destroyed, that the
railway companies must ship on equal
terms to every American citizen, that
the discrimination contracted for by
the South. Improvement Co., they
would not submit to. They would tear
up the railroad tracks and burn their
bridges first.
'"That band of determined men,
backed by the mighty power of right,
rocked the old Keystone state to her
centre. They went before the legis-
lature, then in session, and demanded
and secured the repeal of the South
Improvement Co. charter, and the life
of that corporation, a creature of the
state, was sniffed out just as any corpo-
ration's life can be sniffed out whenev-
er the public welfare demands it.
For the public welfare is the su-
preme law.
"But the monopoly which the rail-
way companies failed to create under
the open contract with the South Im-
provement Co., they have since cre-
ated by a system of secret rebates and
drawbacks which they have given to
the Standard Oil Company.
"Yes, and this same power of secret
rebates frojn the railway companies
has since monopolized in the hands of
the favored few almost every industry
in America. The awful crime of rail-
way discrimination has destroyed the
equal rights of the American citizen-
ship. It has monopolized the indus-
tries of the country, it has gone on
and on creating monopoly, transfer-
ring the wealth created by the masses
into the hands of a few,until today
almost every developed resource of this
great land is under control of some
kind of an accursed monopoly.
"That little band of oil-producers
gathered in Franklin in 1872, protest-
ing against monopoly, protesting
against special privileges; has broaden-
ed and widened, just in proportion as
monopolies have touched the other in-
dustries in our land, until today the
representative patriotic men of every
state of this great nation have gather-
ed here at Chicao, determined that the
wrong of monopolies and trusts shall be
wiped off the escutcheon of the Repub>
lie.
The mighty power of right against
wrong which shook the old state of
Pennsylvania in 1872, and forced the
repeal of the South Improvement Co.
charier, will shake the Republic of
states in 1900. The mighty power of
the American ballot, focusscd upon the
wrong of monopoly, focussed upon the
laws by which special privileges have
been granted, will wipe out the wrong
and purge from the statute books all
special privileges.
"Up from all of the centuries, up
from all the sacrifices of all the pat-
riots, heroes and martyrs of the past
has come this government of ours,
based upon the doctrine of equal rights
of man. If we fail, liberty is lost
forever. There is no virgin soil, no
unbroken wilderness, in which to plant
the tree of liberty again, as our fath-
ers planted it.
"Bue we will not fail. This gov-
ernment of and by and for the people
must not go down into that awful
night of an oligarchy of corporate
wealth. The old Revolutionary Spirit
is not dead. Out of its long sleep it
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Park, Milton. Southern Mercury. (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 20, No. 8, Ed. 1 Thursday, February 22, 1900, newspaper, February 22, 1900; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth185841/m1/1/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .