Staunton spectator and vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1896-1916, 1909-08-27
TILLMAN AND BAILEY
HAVE HARD FIGHT.
A WASHINGTON REPORT SAYS ALL IS
NOT PLAIN SAILING FOR THESE
TWO PROMINENT MEN,

| A WASHINGTON REPORT SAYS ALL Is
NOT PLAIN SAILING FOR THESE
| TWO PROMINENT MEN.
| The tariff is the cause if reports that
have reached Washington during the
last day or two are correct that Sena-
tor Benjamin Ryan Tillman, of South
Carolina, and Senator Joseph Weldon
Bailey, of Texas, by all odds the two
most prominent men in the Upper
house of Congress, are in an death
grapple to retain their seats in the SEN
ate.
Senator Tillman got back to South
Carolina soon after the close of the
extra session of Congress. Hardly had
he stepped on Carolina soil before he
saw, according to what is said here,
that things were not going his way;
that his great moral institution, the
State dispensary, and later the county
dispenSaries were about to be voted
out, leaving him not political leg to
stand upon, snd that, in addition, the
people, many of whom had been among
his loyal supporters, were about to call
him to account for lining up with the
Republicans on the tariff and for quit
ting the Senate, when, by staying in
Washington he might have helped to
win great and memorable fight for
the people of the South.
TILLMAN ON STUMP.
Hearing these things it was not to be
expected that the pitchfork senator
could remain silent four years until the
real time to make a campaign for re-
election should come around. Instead
he has taken the stump and has prac-
tically posted South Carolina from
mountain to seashore with the fact that
he will tell the people what he did to
keep the yankees" in the Senate from
running away with the United States
treasury, and what other indiscretions
they might have committed had it not
been for his sleuth-like watchfulness
and vigilance. He has outlined his
campaign of attack against two of the
leading newspapers in South Carolina,
and will endeavor to show that, to use
his own copyrighted expression they
are "head devils'' in the State and that
were it not for them the Palmetto State
would be different place in many re-
spects. Meantime those editors are
champing their bits with Impotence
to get at him.
BAILEY HAS HARD JOB.
1t is said of Senator Bailey that when
he got back to his native IL wn-Gaines-
v1lle-a few days ago he was met with
brass band and was escorted around
the village. But there is probably more
real trouble in sight for Bailey than
for Tillman. Bailey has never, in the
eyes of some persons, altogether cleared
himself from the imputation that he
became fabulously rich at the hands of
the Waters-Pierce Oil Company. All
that is now ancient history except the
fact that no sooner had the gifted Texan
reached the land of the Alamo than he
was called upon to begin the fiercest
kind of fight to retain his seat in the
Senate. In addition to this, it is said
that Bailey's opponents are using with
some effect the accusations that in the
tariff fight he showed little too much
republicanism for the staunch demo-
cracy of the Texas cow-punchers TO
stand. However this may be, and
whether or not it is true that Mr.. Bailey
did shy off from the democratic ship
when she was laundering at sea, it is
peculiar fact that both he and Senator
Tillman are fighting for their very
political life.
Four years must elapse before they
are to go through the final crucial tests,
but in the meantime they will wage,
it is said, such contest for vindica-
ton and reelection that the issue of
whether or not they are to be returned
to the Senate will be settled, for all
practical purposes, within the next
year.