_The Easter Hope_ _Cora A. Matson Dolson_ _300_ _The Say of Other Editors_ _301_ _News Record_ _306_ _Along the Firing Line_ _Circulation Manager_ _318_ Application made for Entry as Second-Class Matter, February 17, 1906, at the Post Office at New York, N. Y., under the Act of Congress of March 3, 1879. Copyright, 1906, in U. S. and Great Britain. Published by TOM WATSON’S MAGAZINE, 121 WEST 42D STREET, N. Y. TERMS: $1.50 A YEAR; 15 CENTS A NUMBER [Illustration: The Mockers of the Law and Despoilers of the People Have in Their Pay Vast Numbers to Vent Spleen and Venom on the Man that Dares to Speak Truth.] _WATSON’S MAGAZINE_ VOL. IV APRIL, 1906 NO. 2 _Editorials_ BY THOMAS E. WATSON _Sam Spencer_ Not long ago the Voting Trustees of the Southern Railway Company wrote to Samuel Spencer, President of that robber combine, in the following terms: “We congratulate you upon the success achieved in the extension and operation of the property which have resulted in nearly doubling the extent of its lines, trebling its gross earnings, and increasing its net earnings above fixed charges, _over five hundred and twenty-five per cent._ in the period of eleven years which have elapsed since its formation.” Bully for Sam! He set out to please the men who bought him, and he has done it. The Wall Street rascals who grabbed up the railroads in the Southern States knew very well that they themselves could not do the work which was required for the success of their schemes. The Belmonts and the Morgans could not in person approach the editors, the politicians, the legislators and the federal judges. Strategy requires that local men be used in the looting of any given state or section. One traitor inside the citadel is worth ten thousand soldiers on the outside, when the object is to take the citadel. To bribe somebody from within to open the gates is far more effective, vastly more to be desired, than to attempt to breach the walls or batter down the gates. Consequently when Western states are to be plundered, the Wall Street corporations use Western men as their tools. Local Western corruptionists sell out to Wall Street, and do in Western states the dirty work of their Wall Street masters. So in the South, the Wall Street robber-gangs do not operate in person; they act through Southern agents. In pursuance of this subtle policy, the Wall Street corporations, who gobbled up the various lines which now compose the Southern Railway System, put at the head of it a Southern man, a Georgian, of the name of Samuel Spencer.