Incorporated in 1910 by the Georgialawyer, author, and statesmanThomas E. Watson, the Jeffersonian Publishing Company was the official mouthpiece of Georgia’s firebrand Populist. The company printed most of Watson’sliterary works—pamphlets, monographs, biographies, and histories—but it was known primarily for Watson’s newspaper,The Weekly Jeffersonian, and his monthly literary magazine,Watson’s Jeffersonian Magazine. Initially given to trenchant muckraking editorials written in thePopulist Party spirit, both magazine and newspaper eventually included Watson’s fierce attacks against theCatholic Church hierarchy and the domestic and foreign policies of U.S. presidentWoodrow Wilson. Watson’s publications survived an organized Catholic boycott and a federal prosecution for mailing obscene literature, and would not be silenced until finally suppressed by the Wilson administration under the Espionage Act of 1917. Despite controversy and opposition, Watson’s weekly and monthly publications commanded a loyal political force, and no Georgiagovernor between 1906 and 1922 was elected without Watson’s support.

A celebrated criminal defense lawyer for much of his career, Watson still was no newcomer to publishing. The intellectual force behind the Populist revolt of the 1890s, Watson launched and edited the successful weeklyPeople’s Party Paper in 1891. He was a frequent contributor to the Populist journalArena and other national periodicals and was the author of several books:TheStory of France (1899),Napoleon: A Sketch of His Life, Character, Struggles, and Achievements (1902), andThe Life and Times of Thomas Jefferson (1903). In the midst of his failed 1904 presidential campaign, Watson refused repeated offers from William Randolph Hearst to edit theNew YorkAmerican. He instead launchedTom Watson’s Magazine in 1905, a monthly literary magazine published from New York. The first issue sold more than 100,000 copies. With articles from such contributing authors as lawyer Clarence Darrow and novelist Theodore Dreiser and with Watson’s sensational editorials that abused class rule and runaway capitalism, the magazine was identified with other well-read muckraking and reform journals of its day.

His magazine’s early success notwithstanding, Watson was soon at odds with the management practices and unsavory reputation of his business partner, W. D. Mann. In late 1906 Watson moved the magazine’s publication toAtlanta, where it joined its sister weekly newspaper begun months earlier, and underwent a name change, toWatson’s Jeffersonian Magazine. Aided by the mailing list ofHoke Smith’sAtlanta Journal, Watson’s weekly and monthly enjoyed continued popularity with loyal constituents and former Populists. Watson affectionately dubbed his readers “Old Man Peepul” and “Aunt Sarah Jane.” Focusing on national issues, theWeekly Jeffersonian rivaled theJournal andClark Howell’sAtlantaConstitution for circulation and statewide influence.

In 1910 Watson purchased the copyrights to his books, constructed a modern printing plant within sight of hisThomson home, Hickory Hill, and moved his publications one last time. He named his friend and political ally and the future Georgia Commissioner of AgricultureJ. J. Brown as vice president and moved managing editor Alice Lytle to Thomson. The 9,000-square-foot plant employed thirty people and was equipped to print, stitch, and bind Watson’s periodicals and books.

Also in 1910 Watson began a deliberate serial crusade against the Catholic hierarchy. While his mistrust of foreign missions and the historic political activities of the Catholic Church had manifested itself earlier in both his periodicals and histories, Watson’s campaign of 1910 took on a more vitriolic complexion. His bitter attacks in “the Jeffs” against the abuses of the church and a wealth of purported sexual crimes ran unabated for seven years, attracted an effective Catholic boycott, and eventually, a federal indictment. Watson was arrested on June 3, 1912, for sending through the U.S. mail a Latin quotation considered obscene for the day—a quotation Watson reprinted to illustrate the vile nature of questions asked of female parishioners by their confessors. Watson led his own defense and in 1916, after a quashed indictment and a mistrial, won his own acquittal.

Watson’s contentious publications again found the national spotlight in 1914, after Watson bristled at anAtlantaJournal editorial urging a retrial forLeo Frank. A wealthy, northern,Jewish manager of the National Pencil Company in Atlanta, Frank had been convicted a year earlier of raping and murdering Mary Phagan, a working-class thirteen-year-old company employee. Frank’s conviction was subsequently upheld on five appeals to theGeorgia Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court. Watson, who had refused offers to assist in the defense and in the prosecution, remained publicly silent on the case until Hoke Smith’s newspaper printed the editorial.

Watson assailed theJournal for judicial tampering (the case was under appeal), took on northern publishers who clamored for a new trial, and began a two-year defense of Georgia’sjudicial system and demonstration of the guilt of the “libertine Jew.” Editorials in his weekly exploded into expansive evidentiary and trial reviews inWatson’s Magazine. Georgia governorJohn M. Slaton commuted Frank’s death sentence during his final days in office, outraging many Georgians and prompting Watson to ask his readers “whether Lynch lawis not better than no law at all.” Two months later Frank was taken from the jail inMilledgeville by a group of prominentMarietta citizens, driven back to Marietta, and hanged. Watson responded to the news through theJeffersonian: “Now let outsiders attend to their own business, AND LEAVE OURS ALONE.” For many, the episode branded Watson as an anti-Semite for the only time in his life.

Through it all, Watson’s paper and magazine continued to attack Wilson’s policies regarding the Conscription Act and American involvement inWorld War I and the League of Nations. As it did with the socialist Eugene Debs, the Wilson administration ultimately silenced Watson’s printed protests in 1917 by denying his paper and magazine the use of the U.S. mail under the Espionage Act. Unlike other progressive reformers and Debs, Watson narrowly escaped federal prosecution.

Watson would continue his fight against Wilson’s internationalism in 1918 in the pages of his newly purchased weeklyColumbiaSentinel, but in fact the Jeffersonian Publishing Company was silenced forever. Like Watson, it was foreordained to a short-lived and turbulent career.

Brown, Tad. "Jeffersonian Publishing Company." New Georgia Encyclopedia, last modified Aug 22, 2013. https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/jeffersonian-publishing-company/

Brown, T. (2005). Jeffersonian Publishing Company. InNew Georgia Encyclopedia. Retrieved Aug 22, 2013, from https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/jeffersonian-publishing-company/

Brown, Tad. "Jeffersonian Publishing Company."New Georgia Encyclopedia, 03 June 2005, https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/jeffersonian-publishing-company/.

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Jeffersonian Publishing Company

Incorporated in 1910 by the Georgia lawyer, author, and statesman Thomas E. Watson, the Jeffersonian Publishing Company was the official mouthpiece of Georgia’s firebrand Populist.…