The Laurens advertiser. (Laurens, S.C.) 1885-1973, 1905-08-23
LYON AND CHRISTENSEN.

Messrs. Lyon and Christensen did
not after all prove in S~partanburg that
any large sun of money had been
stolen or Incorporated by persons
connected with the Dispensary. The
investigation had to do with petty graft
and ~grafters. The sum of money in
volved in the now notorious newspaper
transaction was picayune. The testi-
mony of brides given and received for
appointments of dispensers was small
and mean bribery. No evidence of a
theft respectable in proportions or of
robbery worthy of other thar a grovel-
ing and slow-witted william was brought
to light. True, if appointments habit
ually have been purchased in Spartan
burg, that the purchasers would not
hesitate to recoup themselves by abus-
ing the regulations as to sales. A man
who is taxed $4O0 before he is elected
dispenser may be expected to conduct a
blind tiger under the protection of his
~dispensary. At the same time, the in
dividual %offenses, we say, which have
brought shame to the Dispensary sys-
ten in Spartanburg were small.
But they were numerous. They were
enough to disclose the existence of a
System" Messrs. Lyon and Christen-
sen proved the large and important fact
of an atmosphere of corruption and
venality in Spartanburg, which the Dis
pensary has created. The reports of
the investigation have discovered to the
public a considerable group of persons
uncommonly %depraved, without self-re-
spect and with their sense of discrim-
nation between honesty and dishonesty
scared. 1t included drunkards, bribers,
bribe-takers, DULLES, loud and profane
swearers and others given to vice, the
mention of which is never edifying.
Seldom are so many persons of the un-
clean and repulsive sort forced upon
the disgusted attention of South Caro-
linians at the same time as it was the
task of Messrs. Lyon and Christensen
to drag from the Dispensary slums.
What these two young gentlemen have
done ought to be fully understood. The
work cut out for them was both nasty
and dangerous. 1t was such that any
healthy-minded man would gladly have
avoided. Mingling even in an official
way with the vile creatures of the
S~partanburg Dispensary crew must
have been s%ickening, but more than
that, it invited a peril. Among the
subjects for investigation were more
than one of the kind that carry pistols
and brass "knucks," who have no re-
gard for peace or for the principles of
fair fighting, which gentlemen accept.
1t is a lame and impotent conclusion
for a mar of decency and education
and character to be shot in the back by
a degraded and british criminal, yet it
was just such a fate as these gentle
men in the performance of their duty
dared. 1t was their good fortune to es-
cape any serious misadventure.
The duty was well worth the doing,
worth the expenditure of time and en-
ergy, and worth the illustration of high
courage. 1t has demonstrated to the
people of South Carolina that this Dis
pensary system is the breeder of all
foul moral diseases. 1t has exhibited it
as attracting to and enmeshing a num-
Der of individuals in a criminal circle
where vice is absolute and no law save
that of the gang" is recognized. 1t
%entrenched in one of the most enlight-
ened cities of the State, in a county
which has always led in moral and civic
progress, and in which the white peo-
pie have been in so large majority that
politics have at no time suffered the
faint frequently due to the presence of
the negro. How the Dispensary system
may implant a cancerous germ in the
%healthiest parts of the commonwealth,
and how it may provide the stimulus to
its noxious growth has been made plain
to the people of the State. 1t is left
for them to cut away the evil thing or
leave it to it's further deadly increase.
Messrs. Lyon and Christensen have full
filled their contract.