The Laurens advertiser. (Laurens, S.C.) 1885-1973, 1906-05-23
LAURENs, Sc, May 70, 1906.
POLITICS EFT CErERA.

POLITICS EFT CETERA.
While this is a political year we hope
that our friends will bear in mind that
politics is not the only end worth pur-
suing.
We think it will be conceded that
the general condition of the people
is better in Laurens now than it has
been in 20 years. More people are out
of debt, more people own land and more
people have better furniture in their
houses, better clothes on their back and
better stock in their stables than ever
before.
Many though are poor. 1t is possible
that the man who has a house full of
children has less money in the bank
than the man who started life ever
with him and has no wife and no chill
dren. The chances are that there are
a number of men in the county who
had some thousands of dollars and some
hundreds of acres of land when they be-
came of age who have nothing now that
is not mortgaged. Always there will
be such cases. Some men are born
with silver spoons in their mouths and
some men are born with shrewdness
and energy and brains that give them
an advantage which no amount of in
herited property will make up for.
The men from whom the weak man
suffers is not the "p~lutocrat'' so much
as it is the strong, lusty, smart and am
bilious fellows who begin ever with
him and crowd him out of the race in
the first furlong. The weak men in
Laurens county are in more danger
from the men to whom God has given a
wealth of ability in muscle, in mind, in
foresight and persistence and who will
make money and buy the lands and
force up the price of lands in the next
twenty years, SO that the weak man
can't buy them, than they are in dan
ger from the Standard Oil Trust or
from any corporation.
Col. Jas. T. Bacon in a recent letter
printed in the Sunday News quotes the
late Col. B. w. Ball as saying that he
remembers as a young man that the
late John Skinner" Smith could come
to the village of Laurens on sales-day
and in twenty minutes transact more
business than the rest of the village
could do altogether in the whole day.
MIR. Smith would leave town after the
twenty minutes.A nan of that type be-
comes a business leader among his fell
lows, "a captain of industry" or COM
merce, no matter where he is placed and
there is no way to help it under Heaven.
Moreover it is right that ability should
have its reward and when we see failures,
men who fail and fail again, if we turn
a strong light upon them we can gen.
orally find their faulty spots-a defect
in body or in mind or in character or in
disposition.
But we are going to talk politics. We
have heard great men declaim on this
or that topic and seen them rear on
their hind-legs and howl about the
wrongs of the people for these many
years, and there are wrongs which
ought to be remedied and which the pa
triotic citizens ought to strive to
remedy. But, two or three years ago.,
a group of Southern men began to try
to help the cotton farmers by moving
on lines apart from politics. They have
accomplished wonders. We are free to
confess that they have amazed us, al
though we have contributed to their eff
forts all we could through this and other
newspapers from the start. These cotton
producer have the whole world that
spins cotton, in this State, in the
East, in New England and Old Eng
land and everywhere, guessing
The time has come when the manu-
facturers seek to know sand treat
with the cotton farmers. We can
not tell what will be the measure of
the final success of this farmers organ
ization but this we do know-it has
taught the farmers to assert them
selves, to sell their own cotton and in
sist upon a voice in fixing the price.
How much have the great politicians
helped in this organization? Perhaps it
is fortunate that they have kept their
mouths out of it. 1t is we'll that the
farmers have found that they can help
themselves just as the bankers and mill
men and merchants and doctors and
plumbers help themselves from time to
time without the aid of wranglers about
wrongs and ~whoopers-up of political
patent medicines.
Yet the farmers have had friends.
Among them those same bankers whom
the politicians only a little while ago
used to denounce as oppressors and
surers and robbers. Among the mer-
chants, lien merchants, who were a ia
voritc topic for abuse. Among them,
all sorts and conditions of business men,
including some of the members of the
Subsidized press" Among them, men
here in this town who were pictured
then by the politicians as enemies of the
people. We should not be greatly sur
prised if there does not rankle far
down in a few hearts even now the no
tion that the people of the town are not
friends of the people in the country, so
virulent was the demagogic poison that