The Laurens advertiser. (Laurens, S.C.) 1885-1973, 1906-06-20
LAURENS, S. c., June 20, 1906.
LIQUOR OR NO U

10 the FORMER I1llmanlte or reform fac
tion, THE ADVERTISER would support
Richard L. Manning for governor, a
man who was always a Conservative
from the Conservative county of Sum-
ter, and a man for whom personally
THE ADVERTISER has the highest re-
spect and cordial regard. But for his
~dlspensary views THE ADVERTISER
would support him. We may support
him anyhow, we can't tell, but if that
former Tillmanite Fraser Lyon of Abb
beville runs, we shall support him
against the field, because he has done
the cause of decency and honesty more
service at more cost to himself than
any man since under the lead of Hamp-
ton, Butler and Gary, the Franklin j.
Moses and r. X. Scott gang of thieves
was driven out.
But if THE ADVERTISER we're a Till
mantle newspaper and believed that the
fight on the ~dispensary was a fight on
Tillmanism, it would support Cole L..
Blease as to whose reform" loyalty
there is no shadow of doubt and who
has been a dispensary man through
good and evil report. Nevertheless, we
expect to see those who charge that
THE ADVERTISER is making a fight for
the "Old Ants" line up at the word
and support an "Old Anti" against
that faithful servant of Reform, Cole
Blease-provided they don't prevail
on tha lattor tp withdraw
But the people who vote for the dis
pensary-w will not vote Tillmanism. They
will, though nCtintending to, vote for
corruption and the corruptioR has en-
tered the ranks of former Tillmamtes
and former "Antis" too. They will
vote in the first place for the interests
of Lanahan of Baltimore, Blumenthal
and Bickert of Atlanta, other liquor
dealers in other cities and last but not
least Jim" Farnum of Charleston.
And they will vote for the Columbia
Whiskey Ring.
Maybe you remember that Ben Till
man used to talk about "~bamboozling
and debauching" in Columbia. Well,
it's there now. Of course we are not
charging that dispensary corruption is
Tillmanite corruption. Why, of the
five old "Anti" counties, four, Rich
land, Georgetown, Beaufort and Sum-
ter, are now ~dispensary counties. The
~dispensary is strong in Charleston too.
But it's an error to say that corrup-
ton has only crept into the state liquor
business within the last few years.
Why, according to Ben Tillman, they've
been selling beer here contrary to law
for years. "Old Ben" said in a speech
last summer that all the beer dispen-
saries were unlawful, which was equiv
alent to saying that any man that ran
a beer saloon was virtually a "'blind
tiger The ex-constab'e, Bahr, swore
last week that money was being handed
about to ~dispensary officials in big wads
at Columbia and Augusta, way back in
Ellerbe's time. Ellerbe was elected
governor in 1896.
A man named Cantey swore last week
that he received from a liquor house for
six months $500 a month for seeing that
advertisements of whiskey were kept on
bill boards around Columbia. We don't
know whether this man was a Tillman-
lite or an Anti-what's that got to do
with it?
Three hundred dollars a month for
looking at the b%ill-boards!
Do you think that the whiskey house
paid that salary? Of course it did. But it
got the money back in the quality of
the liquor sold. This man had a brother
in-law who was a member of the board
of control. We don't know what his
politics was.
But we know the politics of the State
%dispensary. And so do you. 1t is
graft.
And they are going to pass an act
that will prevent men from grating!
They acknowledge that they can't
get men capable of staying honest by
their w efforts to run the concern
So they are going to pass an act that
will put them in straight jackets and
hold down their hands when they would
present them to the whiskey drummers
an act with a hidden spring in it that
will fly loose and kick an official in the
stomach whenever his mouth waters
for the spoils that the whiskey drum
mers distribute.
How many honest, manly, brave
country boys, brought up by G~od-fear-
ing men and women, have gone to Co
lumbia and accepted little or big jobs
with this %dispensary and lost their self
respect, lost their good names, lost
Their characters and sold their souls by
association with whiskey drummers,
blind tigers" and ''swell' dispensary
officials?
No, the corruption is not new. 1t has
been there from the start. Years
Yancey Williams, of Lancaster, a dyed
in-the-wool Tillmanite and an honest
man and gentleman, denounced dispen-