No indeed; you couldn’t pass a bill requiring the railroads to treat our wives and daughters decently at the stations where they have to wait for trains. It would cost too much. * * * * * Yonder sits an elderly lady on a pile of cross-ties. She is sick. She has been brought to the station to take an early train to the city where a specialist can be consulted about her case. It is cold. A heavy fog almost as bad as a drizzle of rain, hangs in the air. The door of the waiting room is locked. There is no fire, no light, no shelter at the station. The aged woman sits upon the cross-ties awaiting the coming of the train—sick, cold and suffering. Is that _your_ mother, my son? No. But it might be. Just such a scene was witnessed by a friend of mine some weeks ago; and the railroad which treats its customers in that beastly manner is one of these same Wall Street gangs of thieves that rob the state of Georgia through the Hamp McWhorters, the Joe Terrells, the Clark Howells who pose as the Democratic Party. * * * * * Great God! Are the people _never_ to wake up to the fact that the machinery of the Democratic Party in Georgia belongs to a lot of Wall Street rascals? Don’t they _know_ that the platform of the Democratic State Convention is never handed out till Hamp McWhorter marks it “O. K.”? Don’t they _know_ that the majority of the daily papers belong to the railroads and _are controlled by the railroads_? * * * * * The Hon. Clark Howell closes his feeble editorial by making a side-thrust at this Magazine as “a subsidiary company to _Town Topics_.” As to _that_, the answer is swift and to the point. _I am this Magazine._ Not a line can go into it to which I object. Not a line can be kept out of it to which I put my approval. My contract gives the control of the Magazine to me completely. What more could anybody exact? That _Town Topics_ owns a majority of the stock is true. But _Town Topics_ has no more rights over the Magazine itself than the _Atlanta Constitution_ has. * * * * * Tom Lawson, or H. H. Rogers, or Judge Parker, or W. J. Bryan might buy a majority of the stock. I could not prevent that. _But nobody can interfere with my control of the Magazine._ I have no doubt that Mr. Clark Howell envies me my independence. It is extremely doubtful whether he can say for himself and his paper what I have said for myself and the magazine.