The Iuka vidette. (Iuka, Miss.) 1894-1912, 1894-09-13
ARP AND THE A. P. A.
Bill Has No Use For Bigoted Secret
Organizations of Any Kind
They Arc Dangerous to the State Forty
Years Ago Little Aleck Fought the
knownothings and Broke Them
Up In Georgia.

Our farmers are going to be in a bad
fix next winter. They won't have any
nubbins to feed the steers on. l never
saw such big fire corn nor so much of it.
! never saw such fine cotton in Barlow
County nor so much of it, Our farmers
made fine crop of wheat and oats, and
they will make big crop of sweet
potatoes. The gardens are fine, the
cattle are fat and the chickens are juicy.
A kind providence and diligent work
beats the alliance and all its signs and
grips and passwords and resolutions. |
see that some farmers in South Carolina
have recently passed a resolution that
they will not sell their cotton seed for
less than 20 cents bushel. If they
mean by that to put them back in the
land, 1t is good, but If they mean to
force the market price, it is as foolish
as our State alliance at Macon, that q
few years ago resolved that they would
hold their cotton until it brought 121S
cents pound. But farmers generally
have quit such foolishness and have
fallen back on hard work. They had
some fun and few of their leaders got
Into office, but the masses never got
their hands in the subtreasury nor their
| cotton and grain in government ware
houses. l never knew any good to come
of these secret-class associations, except
where they were formed for charity.
Those formed for political purposes are
menace to good government and an
insult to outsiders. ! remember when
the Knownothing party came into being
and for few months lowered over the
country like dark and threatening
cloud. Those who did not belong to it
felt subdued and alarmed for they did
not know who they were nor whom to
talk to in confidence. Some mornings
we would find the sidewalk spotted
with red paper triangles that meant a
secret meeting somewhere that night
II municipal election came off the
Knownothings never said word, but
when the ballots were counted men
were elected who were not candidates
Outsiders stood aghast Many would
have joined but were not wanted nor in
vited. Put none but Americans on
guard tonight" was the patriotic shib-
bolcth, and no foreign-born citizen need
| apply. Protestant preachers were all
in, but no priests nor Roman Catholics.
But soon the power of money began to
| be felt and some of the worst men were
| nominated for office. About that time
Aleck Stephens had walked up to the
situation. He stumped the State against
the new party, and so keen was his in
vective, so mastery his arguments, that
good men everywhere dropped out of it,
and their candidates were defeated. 1t
was whitening and tragic to see the
little giant flash his dark eyes and hear
him scream:
How now ye secret, dark and mid
night hays! What is it ye do? A deed
without name" Yes, party with
out name, party that darkeneth
council without knowledge; star cham
Der that would politically guilotine La
fayette and Baron de Steuben, if they
were here; a party that designing
bypocrites and disappointed dema-
gogues originated for their own aggran-
| Element.
Well, he killed it in Georgia. Of
course he had help and co-opera ton, but
he was the chief eXecutioners
| Let me see. That was about forty
| years ago, and now that same old party
has come to life again under new name
| the A. z. A.'s-and its vilification of
l
Roman Catholics is just like it was then.
The papers sent me from Duluth and
Rock Island TEEN with SANDER and lies.
| They declare the Roman Catholic priests
to be libertines and the converts
| bagnios, and the editor of the Duluth
paper boldly charges that the cells in
the basement of the convent in Duluth
were built to imprison the nuns who re-
fused to submit themselves to the priests.
The Duluth paper says that the asser-
tions that the Shermans were Roman
Catholics is an Infamous, slanderous lie.
and that If Rosecrans, Mcclellan and
Mcdowell and McClennard we're Roman
Catholics they were utter failures as
| commanders: that out of the $4,000
Catholic 1rishmen in the Union army
over 100000 of them deserted, and
that Roman Catholic influence caused
the assassination of Lincoln and Gar
field. They are awful mad with Mr..
Cleveland for attending high mass on
the death of Carnot, and denounce the
Pope for sending old jeff Davis b is apos-
tolic blessing. The anathemas in these
papers are fearful, and / don't see how
they can keep up the lick. When was
young read book called "The Awful
Disclosures of Maria Monk" Maria
was an escaped nun from Roman Cath
Ole convent in Montreal, and her pitt
ful story was as startling as that of Ida
Wells on the Southern people. She
sold $50, 600 copies in little time, and
was great heroine in the best society
OF New York and Boston. But by and
by the whole story was disproved by
committee of Protestant clergymen In
Montreal, and Maria had to retire as a
fraud and imposter But she made
snug fortune to retire on, and that is
what Ida is trying to do. The fools are