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 The Chronicle welcomes you online! Please feel free to respond to these editorials or letters to the editor by sending your letters to the editor.

We condense letters; most, as published, won't exceed 300 words. A letter must include the writer's name and city, which will be published, and an address and telephone number for verification, which will not be published. Writers may be limited to one letter every 30 days. Open letters, letters to third parties and poetry are not considered. Letters from people living outside the Chronicle's circulation area usually are not considered.

Tom Watson

Tom Watson

Web posted January 1, 2000

 Have a thought? Go to the @ugusta Forums.

One of America's greatest populist leaders, and one of the South's great orators and editorialists, is a native of Thomson. This deep thinker, scholar, author and historian served in the state legislature and was later elected to the U.S. Congress. One of his main planks was that government ``should own and operate the means of transportation and communication'' -- a slap at what he labeled the rapaciousness of the railroads. There's no question that, between 1906 and 1917, Tom Watson was the dominant force in Georgia politics -- especially through his hard-hitting editorials in his periodicals, the Jeffersonians .

The ``Sage of Hickory Hill'' is credited with the idea of establishing the rural free mail delivery system. He died, a U.S. senator from Georgia, in 1923.