The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1908-02-23
Ollie M. James, of Kentucky
BY sAVOYARp!

The First was the Gibraltar dis
trlct or Kentucky in the '4es of the last
century, so named for it's immense
Democratic majOrities. even when Clay
and Crittenden. Dixon and Underwood
were leaders of the Wings. 1t embraces
Jackson's Purchase that part of the
i state west of the Tennessee river, where
there have been nothing but Democrats
for threescore years and ten. 1t is a
magnificent country. as prodigally en-
Il dowed by nature as any other" in the
union. The farm products are corn.
wheat, oats, rye, cotton, tobacco. and
whisky. The forests yield immense
quantities of lumber and the orchards
/ are prolific of fruits. Vast stores of
coal, iron and stone are in her mines.
Paducah is growing and thriving city
located where the Cumberland and the
Tennessee find the Ohio river and near
the confluence Of the Ohio and the Mis-
sissippi. Some day it will be a great
commercial center.
The Gibraltar district was never rep
resented in the American congress by
| a Wing, or Know-Nothing. or a Re-
publican, though the bayonets sent one
or two Union men" to congress during
1 the war. when some thousands of the
electorate were marching and fighting
j with Breckenridge and riding and fight.
ing with Forrest in the big war. In
i 1867 Fulton county cast but two Re-
| publican votes in as free an election
and as fair count as was ever had In
this union.
| The present representative is a native
| OF Crittenden county, the son of a lead
! ing. lawyer Of that section, and a man
| born to public life. He was a politi-
| clan before he entered the teens and a
stump speaker at the completion of his
second lustrum. At sixteen he was
page in the Kentucky legislature and
an active politician. Ben Johnson, the
| present representative in congress from
the Fourth district, of whom this coun-
try will likely hear much the next
| double decade was the speaker when
James was page. Most boys would have
been forever ruined living that life, half
pet and half counselor of the leading
men of the state, at that tender age.
/ Ollie James studied law in his faith
| er's office and came to the bar at the
| age of 20 by virtue of an enabling act of
| the legislature relieving him Of the dis
ability of legal infancy. He became
a partner in his fathers extensive prac-
/ tice, and soon developed into skilful
| and successful trial lawyer in courts OF
| nisi prius He rode circuit" and was
a powerful advocate before the juries of
| the entire district. Then, as he is now,
and as he will be at seventy, if he shall
survive to that age, Ollie James was
! big boy with more capacity for max
! ing friends and retaining their affec-
| ton than any other man I'm the state.
| His sincerity was, and is, transparent,
his convictions deep seated, his enthu-
| siasm overlooking, and his good fellow
| ship delightful. There has not been a
day OF his life that the people of the
| Gibraltar district would not have chos-
| en- him to any Office to which he was ell
igible under the constitution, and the
only fault they ever found with him
was that he refused to stand for con-
gress as soon as he attained to the con-
stitutional age of % years.
It was in 1895, at the age of "a, that
| Ollie James first asserted himself as
! state leader, and on that occasion he
was despers tely and defiantly wrong.
A convention was held in the western
district, embracing one-third of the
state, and the buttcut of the Demo-
cratic party, to nominate candidate
| for railroad commissioner. James was
a delegate and made a speech in favor
of 16 to l that simply stampeded the
! convention. which gave him the plat
| form and the candidate he favored.
! ssAt that time the state was for sound
money, and at the state convention in
|
made a sound money platform, but Wat
Harden, silver man. was nominated
! for governor. He was a brilliant ora
| tor, a popular fdvOrite, and one OF the
bestowed public men of his day; but he
was defeated at the polls and the Demo-
cratic party of the state was so hope
lessly demoralized that Mckinley car
ried Kentucky in 1886.
The late Isham G. Harris was a
great man. and had he been president
of the confederacy, it is altogether prob
able that the south would have gained
her independence by 1866; but Senator
Harris was no political economist and
fell into the grand error of the fiatists.
1t was in 1895 that he convoked the
Memphis conference which pledged the
Democracy of the Mississippi valley tol
16 to l. The country had accepted the
Wilson tariff and had gone to work
Just as later it accepted the Dingley
law and went to work. The iron and
steel business is the infallible industrial
barometer. and when that Memphis con-
ference was called hundreds of furnaces
that had been cold for two years were
in blast. Labor was In demand: wages
were advancing; prosperity was on the
threshold; but all this was reversed as
soon as Harris Memphis conference de-
arms and waited two years longer. The
Republican party stole Grover Cleve-
lands financial wisdom, engrafted it on
the law--not all of it. more'S the pity
business came out of it's hiding, labor
went to work at the biggest wage in the
world, and prosperity came back at a
hop SKIP and jump. and the Democratic
party took to the wilderness. o, the
folly of it, But the gods are powerless
before stupidity.
Then came the Goebel business that
split the Democratic party of Kentucky
wider than ever. sending as it did. many
Bryan 16 to 1-ers of 1896 into the Re-
publican party, where they are this
good day.
The present governor of Kentucky is
a Republican, chosen by $4,000 major
ty, due to the impression made on the |
minds of some so, 900 Kentucky Demo- |
Gratis that there was a machine at
Frankfort that was governing the ate |