The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1908-09-30
M'LAURlN DEFIANT.
Says lie Took Standard Oil Money and
GIories in 1t.

New York, Sept 3e-Ex-United
States Senator John Lowndes Nc
Laurin of South Carolina has arrived
in New York and gives out the follow
ing signed statement regarding the
correspondence between himself and
John ID. Archbold,. vice president or
the Standard Oil company, as recently
made public by w. r. Hearst:
IAN effort has been made to create
political sensation by the publication
of certain correspondence between Mr..
Archbold and myself. For that cor
respondence I have no apology to
make. AT the time that the letters
JOY and am still proud to possess the
friendship of Mr.. Archbold for whom
l have the highest regard. At the
time the letters were written L was
engaged in bitter struggle in which
was involved not only my own po-
litical future but the economic and
political principles for which I stood,
stated briefly. meant the emancipation
dice of Bourbonism and the "bloody
shirt into the freedom of an enlight-
ened self interest and the progress of
an intelligent findustrialism.
''In the support of these principles
and the hope of this progress l saw
no improperly in enlisting, if prac-
ticable, the assistance of the most pro-
gressively administered, and the most
Intellectually Differed corporation that
human intelligence has vet produced.
Nor has the enormous body of statu-
tory crime since created or the hypo-
critical affection of morality assumed
by some of our legislatures and con-
gresS in any wise changed my point
of view or quickened my conscience of
expediency as seems. to have been the
case with some of my former col
leagues and associates.
1.-THE constituencies that they repre-
sent do not hesitate to take Mr.. Carne-
gieS trust produced and tariff protect
ed money for their churches and
libraries, or to accept Mr.. Rockefeller's
large donations for the education or
the negro whom they have disfran-
chised.
IF political campaigns are to be run
without money and political progress is
to be achieved without financial ex-
penditures. it is high time that both
parties should be apprised of the ar
rival of that Utopian era, but until
that period has arrived l can see no
reason why I, when battling for what
I conceive to be right, should refuse to
seek or decline to accept the support
whether financial or personal of which
1 stood in need. Men may die, but
right principles persist and in the end
they will triumph. ------. ---
Il believe that the south and espe-
cially. the state of South Carolina is
today throttled in its natural progress
and its intelligent exercise of the right
of self government by an. oligarchy
which keeps alive the prejudices of a
past generation through the perpetFa-
ton of ignorance and corruption and 1
shall welcome the day when the educa-
tionaI propaganda, which can only be
spread bv the use of money whether
it be Standard Oil money or railroad
money or any other money save thai
derived from the governmental sale of
whisky. will enable the people to see
more clearly their own best interests
and cast out those leaders whose hypo-
critical morality and i'll disguised
selfishness is responsible for the fact
that in the south illiteracy is greater
and the increase of wealth slower than
in any great section of the un ion.s Il
TT is the fashion Of preSent-day
political hypocrisy to, decrya the cor
poration, to abhor the trust and to pre-
tend in public to prescribe the in
f1uence of wealth; but as in this coun-
try and in this age wealth is. and mus
be. the reward of intelligence. I am not
willing to be considered amongst those
cowardly enough to deny it the in
fuence which intelligence has always
exercised under every form of govern
ment thus far devised. OF a govern
ment of ignorance, l have had enough
in my native state. I hope for and
shall continue to work for govern
ment of intelligence.
JOHN LOWNDES- M'LAURIN."