April 24, 1919
Greetings.
IN re-entering
the field of journalism I do so because it affords the greatest
opportunity for service to the people of Mississippi and
American.
My interest in their welfare has not been
diminished in the least by my retirement from public
office.
There is not a root of land the dear old State of
Mississippi that I do not love, or a human being within the confine of the
commonwealth but who has a legitimate claim upon my heart. To serve them
is the highest aim ambition and end of my life.
The people
of Mississippi have been good to me beyond my deserts. They have given me
every political office within their gift that I would in return I have
endeavored to serve them as they deserve to be served. Every official act
of my life has been performed with an eye single to their interest. If I
have ever violated a political promise or varied in any way from the
Democratic platform; if I have gone counter to the history, traditions and
purposes of the Democratic Party as interpreted by Thos. Jefferson I
cannot now recall it. However. I am willing to leave that to the verdict
of the impartial, honest historian.
The is no pleasure or
satisfaction in public office holding, save that which comes from the
consciousness of having done your duty.
"There is a destiny
that makes us brothers.
None goes his way
alone.
All that we send into the lives of others,
Comes back into our own."
Honor is not in holding the office,
but rather in the way the functions of the office are
performed.
Vardaman's Weekly shall be dedicated to the
service of the people of Mississippi and America. Through its columns I
shall endeavor to publish the facts and teach the truth touching all
social, economic and political questions.
The truth shall
be published regardless of who it affects. I have no friends to reward or
enemies to punish at the expense of the public.
It shall
be my highest endeavor to arouse particularly the people of Mississippi to
the importance of doing their own thinking, speaking their honest thoughts
and then making their ballots register a patriotic freeman's
will.
I honor the man who is willing to sink
Half his present
repute for the freedom to think.
And after he has thought,
be his cause strong or weak,
Will
sink t'other half for the privilege to speak."
I find on returning to
Mississippi that there is a purpose under cover on the part of
certain
politicians to repeal the primary election law and make other changes in
our political machinery which, if, done, will abridge the right of the
people to rule.
That purpose should be defeated at once --
the scheme should be killed as a deadly enemy to free
government.
If there ever was a time in the history of
this commonwealth when men should think independently, speak candidly, act
courageousIy, now is the time.
The agents of predatory
wealth were never so active, unscrupulous and reckless in the use of power
as they are today. More than thirty thousand millionaires have been added
to the list of plutocratic government wreckers in the United States in the
last four years.
It is alarming, when we realize the fact
that less than two per cent of the people of this country own seventy
percent of its wealth, while seventy percent of the population own less
than five per cent of its wealth.
That condition cannot
exist contemporancously in the same country with free institutions. It
will inevitably bring about industrial vassalage.
I hope
my friends may help me to put the Weekly in the home of all the reading
people of this state. It is not necessary that you should agree with me in
order to read this paper.
The purpose of the paper is to help you to find
the truth which I hope may lead you aright, always in the performance of
the duties of citizenship.
The white people of Mississippi
must work together to save the State from the hands of those who would use
public office for private gain and personal aggrandizement. In the future,
as in the past, I shall follow the lead of the splendid writer who
said:
"Thou who wouldst serve thy country and thy kind
Winning the praise of honorable men
And love of man; hearts,-- know tile true proof
Of faithfulness lies not therein. That dwells
In the lone consciousness of duty done.
And in the scorn and contumely of souls
Self-soiled with sin; the necessary hate
Of perjured and contaminated spirits
For that whose mere existence brings reproach,
Shame and despair for something last forever
When thou hast won the hatred of the vile
Then know thou hast served well thy fellowmen."
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