The sea coast echo. [volume] (Bay Saint Louis, Miss.) 1892-current, 1907-10-05
Sea Coast Echo.
VARDAMAN VS.. WILLIAMS.

in the recent campaign for the Unlteo
States senatorship, and we will give be-
low few reasons why we cast our SUI
frage in that direction and why we will
be for him in the coming Senatorial
race, when he will clean up sweepstakes
against anyone who dares to dispute his
right to the seat to be vacated by Sena-
tor McLaurin.
In the first place, Vardaman made the
best governor Mississippi has had dur
ing the past decade and has given US a
progressive, fearless administration and
refused to be dictated to by any politi-
cal ring that had been in the habit OF
domineerlng it over the people in our
State, reappointed good men rather than
partisans to office, thus calling down on
his head the male iictions of those who
could not control him. We honor him
for this, and he deserved the place for
that, if for no other reason.
Vardaman is patriotic in the extreme,
loving his home more than any other
place; loving to conserve the plain
wishes of the people rather than to get
off into entangling alliances with Wall
street Democrats, as is frequently
charged against his adversary, Williams.
Again, Vardaman keeps his engage
ments when he7 makes them, and Will
liams fails; on some occasions, to do
this, and rather than shoulder the blame
on himself, tries to place it on Innocent
shoulders. We refer to the Gulfport
engagement of summer before last,
when he failed to show up and then said
over his signature that he had never
made such an engagement. The Echo
has the entire correspondence, and the
matter at the time was published in full
in the Picayune, and Williams read it
and never denied it.
Again, Vardaman was a new man,
and every indication pointed to the fact
that in all matters he would have voted
for the interest of the people of the
South and of the whole country, in con-
tradistinction to the trusts and corpora
tions. Williams voted to pension Gen.
Miles, the man who put the shackles on
Jefferson Davis and dishonored the hero
of the Confederacy. Vardaman would
never have done so.
John Sharp Williams joined the Re-
publican voters in weakening the rate
bill and making it as ineffective as pos
sible. Vardaman would have voted with
and for the interests of the people.
No Republican worked harder against
the Hearst bill than did Sharp Williams.
This measure was for the control of cor
porate transportation and carried with it
many benefits to our people.
There is no more high handed corpo-
ration in this country than the Pullman
Car Company that fix rates to suit
themselves, and yet Sharp Williams
voted to let them continue to fix their
rates rather than to put them under the
Interstate Commerce Commission.
Everybody that gets package by
express feels that he is being robbed,
except those who are so fortunate as to
enjoy franks therefrom. 1t was pro-
posed to put express companies under
Interstate control, one of which corpo-
rations recently declared a dividend of
200 per cent, and yet Williams voted in
favor of not thus restricting the express
companies Vardaman would have died
before he would haye thus sold out the
interests of his people.
Vardaman has been called erratic on
the Negro question and the abolition of
the 18th amendment, but if we claim
vatic vision, those politicians who were
loud in advocating Williams canvass
will yet be called upon by the people to
give an account of the deeds done in the
body before that august tribunal of the
suffrage of the people for misleading
them on that particular point. The
abolition of the fifteenth amendment,
which was never legally passed, of which
all who are acquainted with the law are
cognizant, is being as largely discussed
in Pennsylvania and other places as it
is in Mississippi, and promises to be
vital question yet in politics.
We heard war slogan here on the
election day that Vardaman said that
the people of Bay st. Louis could eat
mullets. This was canard to compass
his defeat; a perversion of facts. VAR
daman was patriotic enough to say,
"That it would be better for the people
of Bay st. Louis to be bottled up in
quarantine few weeks and to suffer
hardships, and to have nothing better
than mullet to eat, than to have yellow
fever come into your towns, endanger-
ing the lives of your citizens: for then
YOU would be bottled up from both Mis-
sissippi and New Orleans.
These patriotic words were perverted
by those who knew better and converted
into slogan to defeat man who ut
tered them patriotically.
We voted for Vardaman also because
he was an individual unit in politics and
was not tied up by politicians. We are
informed that nearly all of the Con-
cressmen were open workers for Will
Hams. and he owes his selection, as we
said in former article, to this source.
The question, like Banquo's ghost,
which will not down, in our mind is: II
Vardaman was beaten by only 648 votes
by the sscrack Democrat of the uni
verse;, with all the political machinery,
sshe politicians, the power of Wall street,
as it is alleged, and all the newspapers
of the Stat6aaHd Louisiana against him,
what will happen to the little fellow that
will be so bold as TO match spears with