Daily tobacco leaf-chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1890-1895, 1892-09-13
In WEST TENNESSEE.
A Leaf Chronicle Correspondent
Receives an Object Lesson.
BY Putting This and That Together He
Comes Pretty Nearly Sizing Up
the Situation Politically.

Special Correspondence Leaf -Chroniclel
| NASHVILLE, Sept. 12.-I went las
week on short trip in West Tennes
see, and as l went took casual obser
vations of the political situation il
that part of the State. 1 stopped ii
three counties and had at some point
of my tour rare opportunities fol
Judging the trend of popular senti
ment and making estimates Of tht
result in November
The first county struck ground In
was Haywood. There / remained
only. short while, and what LEARN
ed about local politics was CLEANED
from talk with a very Democratic
citizen.
"We are all right here" he said
"Old Haywood has learned how tC
go Democratic of late years and she
is going to send up handsome ma
jority for Pete Turney. Our fight is
with the Republicans here, and
Buchanan amt in it. There are
only three populites in this commu-
nifty and they are all of one family
an old man and his three sons"
"Do you know anything of the ad.
joining counties?" enquired.
Here my Democratic friend drew
near and spoke in subdued tones as
If he had secret to impart, and put
ting his answer into interrogatory
form, said:
"Do you know them dang third
partyites are thicker an hops over in
Fayette and Upton, too?"
He went on to explain, however,
that in both of those counties Turney
had triumphed in the Democratic
primaries and the Democratic tickets
had won in the August election and
he, therefore, anticipated that the..'
would be "all right in November, "
Notwithstanding that populites there
were as numerous as autumnal
leaves that streW the brooks in Val
ambrose, or to use figure of speech
less poetic but more in accord with
the subject matter, thicker than the
hair on yellow dogs back.
/ went next to Somerville, the
county seat of Fayette, and there l
had an object lesson in what my
Haywood county friend had been
telling me. 1 CHANGED to strike the
town the same day that H. L. Louk,
OF South Dakota, the president of the
National Alliance, had an appoint
ment to speak there. He was
promptly on hand and there was a
goodly crowd to hear him. He
talked for two hours and there were
lusty cheers when he painted in
pleasing colors the vagaries of Oca-
laism, by which poverty is to be
abolished and all the ways of the
toiling farmer to be made ways of
pleasantness and all his paths paths
of peace.
Charley Simonton, the eloquent
ex-Congressman from the Ninth dis
trict, and now Democratic elector in
the Tenth district, had come
over from CovingtOn to meet
the Alliance champion and answer
such arguments as he might present.
The populites were reluctant to grant
a division of time on the absurd and
utterly false allegation that Mr..
Louk would appear simply in his Ca
pacity of President of the Farmers
Alliance, and consequently make a
non-partisan speech.
1t is strange how the Alliancemen
still adhere to the declaration that
there is no politics in their order,
when all the world knows that its
every point and purpose is politics,
pure and unadulterated.
Louk's speech was politics from be-
ginning to end. He raked both the
old parties fore and aft and dilated
on the glories of the new doctrine
promulgated at Ocala and perfected
at st. Louis and Omaha. This Mr..
Simonton pointed out when, after the
long-winded talk of the gentleman
from South Dakota, he got a chance
to put in word for straight Democ-
racy. A good portion of the crowd
left when Mr.. Simonton began to
speak, but fair sized audience re-
mained, listened attentively to his
well put arguments and laughed
heartily at his racy anecdotes told at
the expense of the apostle of the new
dispensation. Yet when MIR. Simon.
ton had concluded and Mat Rhea,
one of the State railroad assessors,
mounted a bench and proposed three
cheers for John p. Buchanan, the re-
sponse that was given rent the rafters,
Ex-senator Joe Dortch and other
good Democrats about Somerville ex-
planned to me that Louk's fame had
drawn to this meeting all the Third
party men in the county, and many
from other counties, while the DEM
ocrats had remained away. A DEM
oeraiic orator of equal importance,
they said, would have drawn a much