Freight rates and passenger rates are taxes which the transportation companies levy upon freight and passengers. When Sam Spencer added 525 per cent. to the net revenue of his masters, he had to tax it out of the people who patronized the Southern Railroad. Who were these people? Mostly, Southern people. The tax was levied upon the South, and paid by the South. Sam Spencer is a Southern man? Bless you, yes! Wall Street hired him to systematize the robbery of his own people, and he has done it. [Illustration: “We lost fewer lives to the invading host of Sherman than we have lost to the railroads under Sam Spencer.”] During the eleven years of his rule he has plundered his own people of more money than they lost by Sherman’s “Marching through Georgia.” The people of the South have lost more to the Wall Street railway corporations than they lost to the whole of Sherman’s army. The battles of the Civil War were bloody, for it was Greek meet Greek, and it was, in truth, the tug of war. Especially were the battles bloody when Sherman came down against us, for he brought Western troops—the best that the Union had. But we lost fewer lives to the invading host of Sherman than we have lost to the railroads during the eleven years that Sam Spencer has been one of their most relentless and unscrupulous lieutenants. He and his allies in plunder and crime killed and wounded, last year, the staggering total of 92,000 human beings. The ghastly record grows bloodier every year. Human life is nothing; dividends are everything. _Five hundred and twenty-five per cent!_ And Sam Spencer’s bosses pat _him_ on the back and congratulate _him_. Ah, yes; they were feeling good. They expanded. They bubbled over. As who should say: “Sam, you are a trump. When we bought you, we believed we had bought a good thing; now we know it. You have been tried, and you have proven true. We set you to the task of plundering your own people, and you have not flinched from the job. You have skinned them to the queen’s taste. You have doubled our estate, trebled the earnings, and so squeezed the train-crews, the section hands, the roadbed, the shipper and the passenger, that you have swelled our profits more than 525 per cent. We congratulate _you_—and, WE pocket the money.” _The Ungrateful Negro_ _From a Newspaper_ THE AMERICAN FLAG INSULTED BY NEGRO BISHOP IN MACON. DENOUNCED GLORIOUS EMBLEM AS A CONTEMPTIBLE RAG AT THE STATE NEGRO CONVENTION. MACON, GA., Feb. 16.—In an address before the five hundred delegates attending the convention of negroes in this city to discuss racial problems, Bishop H. M. Turner declared the American Flag to be a dirty and contemptible rag. He further said that hell was an improvement on the United States when the negro was involved. In closing he said: