Omaha daily bee., 1899-03-04
pOPULISTS SORE AT CORNELL
Disclosures of Corruption in the Auditor
Office Make Them Sick.
MUCH FEELING IN RICHARDSON COUNTY
Letter from n Falls City Man Shows
Up Some of the Inside Work.
ings of the Reform
Combine.

LINCOLN, March 3.-(Special) no
place in the state Is there more agitation
over the insurance holdup scandal than in
Richardson county, the home Of Auditor
Cornell and many of his deputies. 1t seems
that down there the democrats are many of
them defending the auditor while the pop
ulsts almost all condemn him. The follow
ing letter from a leading populist tells
something of the feeling in that locality:
FALLS CITY, March 2, 1S99.-Dear
Friend: While the state auditors investi-
cation goes people here become more as
founded at the way the free pass and hold-up
business has been carried on The dailies
and all papers we get are looked Tor and
read and reread. We are pleased with Judge
Edgar Howard and his Papillion Times. The
last weeks Times shows very plainly that
cur high handed rulers are running the pop
uist party by their acceptance of free passes,
special trains and other "compimentaries.'
l Rad Norman Musselman read the Times
aloud in the postoflice. When he got
through the crowd was so large that Fred
Beaulicu read il again. Fred is good
reader and places the accent where 1t be-
longs. These articles have particular
weight with the people because Judge How
ard was chairman of the last state dem
ocratic convention. After we got through
with Judge Howard's paper here l sent it
to Barada to Hon. Henry Gerdes.
We have hard time in keeping the popu-
lists from stopping the Independent, our own
populist weekly. We are asking the popu-
lists not to be in hurry, but to wait for
another issue Of the paper If it does not
reverse itself go to printing the truth and
stop whitewashng It will lose lots of sub
scrbers. In fact look for populist mass
meeting in this city denouncing the sheet.
We have been arguing to the people that it
is a weekly and came out after the state
house whitewash committee had done some
work. and this likely misled the editor. We
know that Cornell has much job work and
advertising to give gut and he likely holds
this as club over our editor. We also know
that while the proprietor of the paper is in
the army that his 11-year-oId brother is run
nlnT the paper, so we think the state house
gang is imposing on this boy. We hope 1t
Will not continue until our party weekly is
ruined -
Populists of this county are will
ing to be forgiven for imposing a
man like Cornell on the people.
but / did not have an idea he would prove
corrupt as he has proven. We were a
little over anxious a few years ago to re-
move that other crowd from the state house,
hence we were not as particular in the Sc
lection of our men as we should have been.
1t seems nearly all rejoice that this thing
did not come out through the republicans
We claim we have a large lot of house
cleaning to do, especially when we undertake
to clean out our own party. We populists
are like the French in one thing-we are all
for our country when another nation Jumps
onto u.s. When they quit we attack our po-
litical opponents. When we get through
with them we commence among ourselves
pull out the rotten stumps and thus the time
goes merrily on. SAMUEL KIMMEL.
The populist organ referred to in the