The Laurens advertiser. (Laurens, S.C.) 1885-1973, 1905-08-16
LAURENS, S. C., Aug. 10, 1905.
False to His Colors.

There are times when one wishes to
believe that Ben Tillman is a sincere
man Nobody has ever been able to
prove him guilty of downright dis
honesty and in these times even that is
almost a distinction for a public man.
However, his shameless effrontery as a
politician leaps from his throat, when
ever he opens his mouth, and at no
time has he uttered a more palpable
and slanderous falsehood than when he
accused the ti-Tillmanites for being
responsible for ~Dispensary corruption.
Beginning with the passage of the Dis
pensary Act in 1892 every nti-Tillman
newspaper in South Carolina has de-
nounccd it as contrived in the interest
of corruption and for the propagation
OF thieves. Day in and day out the Anti
Tillman leaders have exposed it to the
world as a system dripping with the
foulest essences of crime, and no one
knows so well as Sena.or Tillman with
what infamous tyranny t was rammed
down the Threats of the decent people
of the State. He knows that he DELHI
erately trained and taught his followers
to drown the voices of all DIRECTORS to
this darling child of his ripened and
rampant political iniquity.
Now, when no longer the Sinking of
lenses of the Dispensary car be hidden,
now that they have broken the unholy
quarantine of sacred Tillman sanction
with which he was SO long able to pro-
tect it, this "brave Ben Tillman" with
characteristic ~poltroonery, deserts his
pals, deserts his associates, leaves
them naked to the winds of a peoples
just indignation, and lifts his voice in
whining villification of those men and
newspapers in South Carolina whose re-
lentless vigilance has probably alone pre-
vented the machine of which he is the
proud father from stealing the whole
State.
At Edgefield last Saturday this fell
low Tillman, the lmpudent %acceptor of
free passes, which he denounced in 9TH
ers, who some years ago unblushingly
confessed to having received whiskey
oAiipiSo 'iuC0lSu llldI TIC lldu Deen
more lied upon by the newspapers"
than has any other man been in South
Carolina. We have no doubt that the
Hon. c. l.. Blease of the Dispensary
investigating Committee will dispute
the claim with him. 1t is not for us to
determine between these politicians
brought up in the same nursery, but it
does seem that whatever Senator Till
mans past may have been he should at
least have the elementary qualities of
manhood that prompt one to stand by
his friends. Nevertheless, watch him
soon desert the nunr faithful pl~--
In 1894 with the air ripe with charges
of Dispensary corruption, with defalca-
tions cropping out here, there and
everywhere in the State, he stood by
his allies. He stood by them in the
campaign of 1896, and again in 1893.
In 1900 he took the stump to defend the
Dispensary, and all oven South Caro-
lima it was his task to rail at and spare
not any man, even the preachers of the
Gospel, who dared to criticise the Dis
pensary system. Now, he says that
the Legislature has been controlled by
Conservatives for six years and that
they have conspired against the Dis
pensary, these same legislators who
elected B. r. Tillman to the Senate,
whose credentials he now holds and
whose creature he is.
Tillman is a man of great talent, as a
public speaker able to arouse, control
and persuade to his purposes he is al
most without rival, and his dominance
in the politics of this State as due to
this power is easy to explain; but it is
hard to understand how even his fol-
lowers, when the spell of his rasping
and %propelling e~loquence is over, in the
privacy of their own reflections, can
stomach his betrayal of his own colors
hpd his deliverance to their enemies of
Ms nearest friends.