Birmingham state herald., 1896-02-28
"CO-OPERATlOND ECHOES.

cdn party ana the DIE guns or the pOpu- lite party were very much in evidence in Birmingham. The occasion for this was that the word had been sent out for meeting to be held here yesterday, called, for the want of a better name and for the purpose of keeping the rank and file of the two parties that are now vlr- tually one in the dark, a conference" The Tom Reed leaders and kolb and the leaders of what was once known in Alabama as the Jeffersonian democratic party, who are with him in his break neck race to get into the republican par ty, were the men who operated the con ference. The Mckinley men and the real populites took no active part.
 Ex-chafrman of the populite state ex- ecutive committee $. M. Adams was pres ent at the meeting, but took no part whatever. He said last night that he was a populite, pure and simple, and felt no nearer the republican party than he did the organized democratic party, and that the principles which he believed in as populite were entirely foreign to those principles advocate by the repub- licans. The object as well as the result of the meeting here did not in any wise have his sympathies or approval.
 Dr. R. A. MoSeley was in a high glee last night One could readily see that the doctor was contempla ting in his mind the great change that he has lived to see come over some men in Alabama, and really he has right to feel good so long as he labors under the impression that the men who but yesterday, as 1t were, were calling him all kind of hard names can succeed in leading into the ranks of the party he represents the common, hon est, horny-handed sons of toll whom he deserted at time when they needed men to stand between them and the herd of hungry vampires who had come to their state, and, by the help of the national ,AT,t aud were consuming everything the devasta- tions of four years bloody war had left them.
 It was clearly evident even to the cas- ual observer that there were three agen- cies at work yesterday one is the power and influence that Tom Reed has as speaker of the house another is the fading hopes of Kolb for political preferment at the hands of the people of Alabama and his burning desire to get his plate turned up in time and at the right place to catch some of the republican pie that he imag- ines will be to dish out in the near future and the third is the gentle influence of the contents of the Morton "barI"
 #
 A prominent populite, who is really a populite said last night that Kolb and Baltzell and few other leaders who think they can pull the wool over the
 
 in the past followed their leadership had better arrange for their pie and get the contract all signed up before the time for the counting of noses comes. Said he: Do you think the white people of Alabama who make up the voting strength of the populite party and who have twice honored Kolb with their votes, while he assured them of his opposition to republicans and republican doctrines, are going tO permit him to sell them to Bob Moseley and Tom Reed for a place for himself as kinder second indorser to Moseley, Parsons & Co.,. as pie dispensers in Alabama? If you do think so you have not properly sized up the manhood of the men whom Kolb is trying to barter off"
 Another populite said: "You will ob- serve that each of these meetings looking to the merging of the populite party into the republican party, and that is all fu- sion on the terms as proposed by Kolb and demanded by Moseley means, the attendance grows beautifully smaller. By the time the ticket composed of three re- publicans and three so-called populites, to whom place is far more important than principles, is nominated there will not be left in the ranks of the followers of Kolb and Bowman and Baltzell enough of the men who rallied under their leadership during two campaigns in Ala ma to en- title those leaders to any consideration at the hands of the republican pie dis pensers. and all they will get, if they get anything will have to be gwen for their will to deliver up their people and not for any success they will have in delivering the goods"
 It is now a settled fact that the two conventions which will meet in Mont gomery will nominate the same ticket and that ticket will have upon it three republicans and three pie hunters, and the real populites who are honest in their convictions will be left out in the cold and the Jeffersonian democrats will have to make choice between voting for re- pubicans and pie hunters, staying at home or voting the democratic ticket. That they will do the latter need not be doubted