The Montgomery advertiser., 1909-10-02
Mask Is Torn From Politicians. FORMER CHIEF JUSTICE
 FORCED TO DEFEND SELF LanderdaIe County Man Exposes
 the Politics. yuaxe Thonaas l.. soweII Presides over the walker County Meeting at Which the Applause is
 Divided.
BY WILL T. sHEEHAN.


 Jasper. oct. 1.--(Special )--Norse and Hindu. in oratorical fighting, met .here today in the second debate be- tween Judge S. D. weakley and Hon. Emmett o'Neai on the proposed amend ment to the Constitution. Morse strength met Hindu agility and quickness; each side applauded its champion. and everybody went away satisfied. The Hindu fighting with his curved sword. his swiftness and his fighting man. The Norseman, since history began to be recorded, has ever been noted as a fierce breast-to-b breast fighter. In the mental alertness by which he slapped his weapon through the guard of his antagonist and drew blood with quick stroke. Judge Weakley was notN unlike the quick and dexterous boodler of the curved sword fighter of the Southern seas, and, welding broad sword of oratory that drove his antagonist in a corner. and piling blow upon blow.
 tmc kNOEscman
 MT. o'Neal was the norseman, fight ing breast-to- abreast powerful and dangerous. Each man accused the other of wandering away from the main issue and bringing into the dis cussion. irrelevant questions. And both. to a certain degree. were right.
 The affair was pleasant. No hard words were said. and there were no unmanly inuendoes to leave sting.
 Judge weakley was more personal than Mir. o'Neal. yet he said nothing at which offense could be taken. But he seemed ito consider MT. oNeafs record on prohibition a matter of vital importance in the settlement of the is- sue. He referred to 1t frequently, and as result what was done and what was not done in the local contests over prohibition in Florence, assumed an unexpected importance.
 Judge Weakley twitted MT. C'Neal over his supposed opposition to prohi- bition and several times attacked MT. O'NeaPs attitude on prohibition in Florence.
 MT. O'NeaI interrupted him to say:
 
 before you ever declared for it."
 This Judge Weakley denied, saying that he had been Good Templar when he was IA years of age, and had made speech for prohibition when he was IS years of age. to which fact he could call as witnesses Rev. MT. Well ston. Methodist minister, who was In the audience,
 Concern Over Conference.
 nd lrl which was largely devoted to argu- ments against whiskey, there ran the note of triumph of crusader who had already won victory and who proposed to win more.
 The Montgomery conference Demo- crats appeared to give him some worry. and he frequently alluded to 1t. Un- like Rev. Brooks Lawrence, he had no words of criticism for the ex-Govern- ors. and the others who participated in the conference, but he intimated that some of the members of the conference had lived into a day the spirit of which they did not appreciate or under stand. They had come down from the day of the sideboard and decanter a day which had gone in Alabama, and exultantly Judge Weakley quoted the lines of the old poem on Grimes, who is dead. and we will never look at his like again.
 MT. ONeal several times scored heav- fly, and, most of all. when he declared in answer to Judge Weakley, that he held with the yearbook of the Anti-Saloon League, that local option was the only American way by which the liquor question could be settled. He urged Judge Weakley and Rev. Brooks Law renee to get in line with the National Anti-Saloon League in supporting local option.
 Goes for GOverOnr.
 MT. O'Neal went after the Governor and the State administration hammer and tongs, and no part of his address so tickIed his hearers as the political doings in Alabama for the past three years.
 He said that the last Legislature had passed more unconstitutional laws and had done more damage to Alabama than any Legislature which had assembled in the State since the kinky-neaded negroes sat in legislative halls"
 He accused the Governor of bank rupting the State, and of forcing this issue on the people in order that he might find an issue on which to ride into the United States Senate and on which he could elect 8 Governor who would appoint him United States Sena- tor in case there was vacancy.
 MT O'Neal pictured the trading and trafficking conditions that prevailed at the Capitol swhen Hon. H. S.. D. Mall lory was summoned to give the two needed votes for the constitutional amendment. He pictured both Judge Weakley and Mir. Mallory as standing hopefully by while the Brooks Law renee political lottery was going on, each expecting the capital prize in the lottery.
 MT. o'NeaI devoted a large part of his argument to assailing Section of the amendment. under which. he said, homes would be raided in Alabama as they are now being raided under the Fuller bill.
 He ridiculed the proposition of Judge Weakley that whiskey could be legally delivered or kept at his office. He submitted that under the constitution, 1t was legal to keep it at the home, and 1t was also legal to keep 1t at mans office.
 welcome to Speakers.
 No committee was Nst the depot to meet Judge Weakley. but a commit