People's party paper. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1891-1898, 1897-07-09
Butler Exposes Himself.

-FOUR column article in his paper, The
Caucasian, doing his very best to JUS
tify himself and cast odium on Mr..
Watson. For his text he takes two
questions he culls from recent ar
ticle in the Peoples Party Paper. In
this article were a number of other
questions, and while Mr.. Butler at
tempts to reply to two of them, he ig-
nores the others without stating why.
However, he takes nearly four columns
to reply to two, which would seem to
indicate that he found them very diff
cult to answer.
We deprecate this elimination and
recrimination between these two Pop
ulist leaders. While we have the ut
most confidence in Mr.. Watson and be-
lieve he did right in the course he pur-
sued during the last campaign as the
candidate of his party, and while we
are further convinced that he was
treated shamefully by those who were
in honor bound to stand by him as true
friends still we have not endorsed Mr..
his fight on Mr.. Butler. We believe
that for the sake of harmonizing the
party Mr.. Watson should have been
willing to bury the past. We believed
that Mr.. Butler really thought the in
terests of the people would be best
served by leading the party, boots and
breeches, into the camp of it's enemies.
While this did not raise Mr.. Butler in
of great party, still we conceded him
honesty of purpose and ascribed his
mistake an error of the head and not
of the heart We were the reader to
do this because so far as his record
was known to us, he had been a con-
sistent Populist, working zealously for
the success of Populist principles in his
position of U. S. Senator.
We have noted the many little filings
which constantly appeared in his pa
per against Mr., Watson, and have tried
to palliate them on the ground of IRA
tation because of the unforgiving atti-
tude of Mr., Watson. It was not until
Mr.. Buffers article this week that the
conviction has come to us that it were
better for Mr.. Butler to be relieved of
his Office of party chairman, and that
he is not cast in the proper mould to
make chairman who can build up the
party.
Mr.. Butler calls those Populists who
favor the holding of the national con-
ference Coxeyites. Why? To bring
reproach upon them. Coxeyite has be-
come term of reproach. To call a
man Coxeyite is equivalent to stig-
matizing him as crank of the first
water among the mossbacks, and even
Populists have so come to regard it
without troubling themselves with
finding good reason therefor. Though
we do not agree with Mr.. Coxey in
some of his views, and think some
things he has done are fantastic and
absurd, yet Mr.. Coxey has never in
sisted on extreme measures and always
has readily and cheerfully subordinated
his plans to those of the party when
authoritatively expressed. In this
Mr.. Coxey was good Populist, and it
was manifest injustice to regard him
as crazy and impracticable crank.
Yet when Mr.. Coxey came to Georgia,
having been misled by few over
would meet cordial reception, he was
ignored by the state convention. The
use of the hall was denied him to make
speech. He was positively snubbed
by Mr.. Watson and so chilly was his
reception that the Atlanta Constitu-
ton, in big headlines, said Coxey had
been given the marble heart.
These things Mr.. Butler knows, and
when, knowing this, he terms Mr..
Watson and the Georgia Populists
"Coxeyites, "..simply to make them obi
Gus, it is clear to US that he isgunft to
be the national chairman.
Mr.. Butler asserts that in justice to
the Populist party the Democrats
should have withdrawn Mr.. Sewall,
but he explains that he made no earn
est effort to compel the Democrats to
act justly. By his letter it appears
that all his efforts were directed to
force Mr. Watson to accept the fusion
policy and support Mr.. Sewall. Mr.,
Butler says that this course was the
proper one for Populists to pursue, for
to have voted the Populist ticket would
have been to help elect Mckinley out
of spite, and to abandon the Populist
candidates after having nominated
them and in doing so pledged to support
them, would rescue a suffering people
from the clutches of the gold and mo-
nopoly ring. So far as Mr.. Butler was
able to force it, the Populist ticket was
abandoned yet Mckinley was elected.
And even if Bryan and Sewall should
have been elected, the gold and monop-
oily rings would have continued as they
are They have got nothing which
they did not get through the aid of the
Democratic party, and the insincerity
of the party is attested by the fact thaN
they never keep single campaign
pledge. Though they pretend to favor
a double standard, since the election
a number of states, our own Demo
cratic free silver state among them,
have voted to legalize gold contracts,
thus repudiating, as far as they were
able, their platform professions in IA
vOr of silver.
AS a reason for suppressing Mr.. Wat
sons letter of acceptance Senator But
Ter says it was done because its publ
cation would have helped elect McKin-
ley We distinctly remember how at
the time Mr.. Butler protested that he
had never received the letter. The
adm ssion he row makes of having de-
liberately told an untruth does not ex-
alt Mr.. Butler in our estimation. 1t
may be diplomacy, but it is not what
we expect OF the official head of the
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