Live Oak daily Democrat. (Live Oak, Fla.) 190?-190?, 1907-06-14
A TALE OF TWO CITIES.

jealous. NO man may rise dDOsc
his fellows without making himself
the target for the shafts of smaller
mortals, or the witlsss jeers OF those
whom he defeated in honest COM
petition and who find some allevia-
ton of their own pangs in seeking
to infiict pain upon the successful
rival And this ungenerous trait is
true sometimes of communities no
less than individuals, an instance Of
which has just come to hand in the
case of Ocala if We may believe that
the Banner, of that city, fairly reflects
the spirit of its local constituency.
But we believe nothing of the kind,
and we refuse to withdraw or qualify
the honest praise we have heretofore
bestowed upon that pleasant little
city. Upon the Banner itself we fix
exclusively the condemnation of seek
ing TO disparage a sister city from
no motive higher than envy so
obvious that il can't be concealed
even by the insincere compliments it
has the poor taste to mix with its
heartfelt detraction.
The facts in the case are few and
simple and conclusive. The last
State census gave Live Oak a popula-
ton of 1900 mot 5000, as the Ban
ner asserts merely to add force to
its detraction), and to Ocala it gave
a population of about 4,000-we for
get the precise number. These
figures have never been impeached
and they stand today conclusive of
the question as to the relative popu-
lation of the two cities at the time
the census was taken. That would
seem to preclude all controversy on
the issue and it does with everybody
except the Ocala Banner. That paper
has never been happy since the re-
turns came in and it has been lying
in wait ever since like a defeated
enemy determined to ''get even"
with an unsuspecting adversary in
a settled contest. At last it thinks
II sees point, aye, two points, which
II laboriously magnifies into ''argu-
ments" with which it would knock
out the census returns, as David did
Goliath with his pebbles in a sling,
and lay low the pride of the fair
metropolis of the Suwannee county
whose only sin is that it counts more
roses than Ocala.
In the special senatorial election in
this county in which there was a very
light vote cast, both in Live Oak and
throughout the county, there was
but little popular interest and, as is
frequently the case, large proper
ton of the people stayed at home on
election day and the vote cast was no
sort of index of the population of
either city or county. Here in the
South especially it is notorious that
except at rare intervals when there
is intense popular feeling, the vote in
State, county and city elections is
generally light and sometimes it is
preposterously out of proportion to
the true population. That was the
case in the senatorial election in this
city, and yet the Banner takes those
figures and attempts with them to
impeach the census returns. Nothing
could be more unjust and the test is
so obviously weak and ineffective
that it will count for nothing with
fair-minded, thinking people. If
Live Oak had cast but fifty votes In
that election, il would not disturb
the fact that she had 1900 people
when the census was taken-and
she's got them yet.
The other pebble in the sling of
the Banner, which it hurls full in
the smiling face of the city whose
larger Official dimensions stir the
steady resentment OF our unhappy
contemporary, is that the Ocala post
Office handles a larger amount Of
mail matter than the postofice here,
as shown by the relative salaries of