The Green Forest tribune., 1900-04-26
Gen. Jeff Davis' Boom.


 The St. Louis Post Dispatch of last Sunday gave the following correspondence from Little Rock concerning Jeff Davis and his re- markable boom for governor.
 ''Jeff Davis is a powerful young man physically. He dresses in Confederate gray, although he is much too young to have seen either the Northern or Southern army. He has a supreme disre- gard for political traditions. He has appealed directly to the peo- pie and they believe in him. His earnestness and apparent candor have struck them so forcibly that to the horror of all the politicians he has simply swept the state.
 The truth is, his popularity is due solely to his bulldog attacks upon the trusts. When others apparently wavered, and when even the supreme court failed to uphold the late legislative enact- ment forbidding trusts in Arkan- sas, Jeff Davis came to the front savagely, and ever since he has been knocking idols off their pedestals. To use his own lan- guage:
 I sued the Standard Oil Co.,, I sued the American Tobacco Co.,. I sued the Continental Tobacco Co.,, l sued the Cotton Seed Oil Trust, l sued the express companies, I sued everything that looked like trust. I sued them all.
 And that's the truth. He sued everything that looked like a trust,' and when the Supreme Court knocked out the law he lam- pooned the court, and announced he would run for governor on that issue. His most telling point al- ways is:
 I make no reflection upon my distinguished opponents; they may be just as honest as am, and just as sincere. But their election, mark my language, will be counted as a victory for the corporations of Arkansas.
 In another of his recent speech es his peroration was:
 The fight is on. Itis between the trusts and the corporations and the people. If l win this race, have got to win it from 525 insurance agents scattered all over the State; 1 have to win it from every railroad, every bank, two-thirds of the lawyers and most of the big politicians. But if can get the plain people of the country to help me, God bless you, we will clean the thing out.
 The papers say that nobody will vote for me except the fellow that wears patched brooches and one gallus and lives up the forks of the creek, and don't pay anything except their poll tax. l don't know how true that is, but l want to tell you that there is no great reformation that originated on this earth that did not come from the ranks of the humble and lowly of the land. Jesus Christ, when he went out and started the great est reformation that, ever blessed mankind, went to the humble and the lowly. He went to the hsher- mans cot, to the stonecutter s bench. He did not have but one smart man in the crowd, and he had to knock the filling out of him in the sand before he could use him.
 The all-absorbing question in Little Rock now is: What will Jeff Davis do when he gets to be Governor?' The city is appre- hensive he will stop work on the million dollar State House, and they say they wouldn't be sur- prised if he did try to run the river through the old State House, as he has threatened to do. At the same time, Jeff Davis has declar- ed in all his speeches that he fa- vors the building of the new cap itol; his only objection seems to be the plan provided for the pay n,eDt of the mOney" :"