Tazewell Republican. [volume] (Tazewell, Va.) 1892-1919, 1908-06-25

sPSpefs eNuit, the departure of
which they seem 70 regret. the perpe-
traitors of which they undertake to hold
up before us as heroes. the continuance
Of which they seem to desire"
After tSiefly discussing the pretended
reason, threatened negro rule. for
the crooked election methods, the News
lesderfarther remarked;1
I'VE knew dirty work had to be done.
but our instincts rebelled at doing it
ourselves. We did not care about put
ting our own personal fingers into a very
nasty mess. Therefore, we hired or
melted what the Farmville Herald so
gleefuliy calls the boys We took
reckless young country fellows. or brok-
en- down men with no characters to lose.
or coarse ward and precinct workers
eager for jobs, and let them do the per
jury, the stealing and the smuggling for
US. We created and hired our rascals.
Every election we developed new
stock of perjurers and bulldozers. We
took igronent or reckless men and train
ed them to perjury, made them our
employed things. We taught them how
to Neal ballots, to forge poll lists. to
alter returns, to play tricks of low
cunning. We laughed and applauded
secretly and joined our miserable tools
IN their lies by lying for them, defend
ing them in the open courts. covering
up their offenses, accepting the results
of their work -
The News Leader was evidently suf-
fering from a sting of conscience
when it thus confessed as to the violent
crimes and gross immoralities of its
party in Virginia. Now its moral in
stlncts are shocked at the suggestion
that this same party would, under anv
circumstances, invent some new scheme
for stealing the Ninth District. We
use the words, the same party. ad-
visedly, because it is controlled bv the
same men that led it when it's periurers
torgers, thieves and thugs were train
ed and used to do the dirty work"
The head-master of the Democratic
training school for fraud was J. TAYLOR
Ellyson, and he is still retained as head
master of the party, and has been ele-
waited to the once honorable position of
Lieutenant Governor. Among those
who laughed and applauded secretly the
miserable tools, and who were the bene-
hcaries of the dirty work, were Claude
A. Swanson, w. f. Rhea and William
Hodges Mann. All these have been re-
Gently elevated to high positions of trust.
but they are among the chief wheels
IN the machine that now dominates the
Democratic party of the State. At the
recent State Convention they were re-
eeived enthusiastically by the delegates
to that convention; and W. F. Rhea's
appointment to the Corporation Com
mission was endorsed at a meeting of
the delegates from the Ninth Dis
trict, the Hon. H. c. Stuart presiding
over that meeting.
Then, another evidence of lack of
genuine spirit of reform within the
Democratic party is furnished by the
placing of w. d. Smith on the district
committee of the Ninth District. This
man is known to be the architect of the
Infamous Scott County Ballot, q" though
ne went upon the witness stand in the
Rhea investigation and by palpable
evasion and suppression of the truth
endeavored to show that he was not re-
sponsible for the infamy. The honorable
men who were placed upon this commit
tee are heartily ashamed of the associ-
alton, but they have to grin and bear it.
1t strikes US as being a little absurd
for the News Leader to say: "The
Democrats are entirely willing to leave
the Republicans a monopoly of larceny
and violation of the law in the district
If you want this monopoly left to the
Republicans, why keep in power your
men who trained the thieves, forgers
and perjurers and who benefited by
their crimes? And how can our Rich
mond contemporary claim that the
Democratic party has become too
thoroughly reformed to steal anything
when the machine invented recently a |
scheme for stealing an entire Congress
slenal district from the Republicans by
simple act of its Legislature? But
we forget, the News Leader, Plate
ike, has washed its hands Of that crime,
by protesting against the act when it |