The Jeffersonian. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1907-1917, 1910-04-14
Dbe Jeffevsen,aa

spoken, excepting Jim Smith?
For how many John Vests running for Con-
gress, have you campaigned?
For years you have been member of body
whose members paid to talk for the people.
How many speeches have you made, Bill? You
have been paid about $65, 900 to do your share in
talk-fest parliament, and you have been almost
as dumb as dumb-bell
Your District might almost as well have sent
a man who was tOngue-tied.
And yet you have the marvellous nerve to come
at me because in a Presidential year. could give
but one speech to the Tenth Congressional Dis
trict, which had already canvassed SO thorough
ly that nearly every white voter was as fixed, as
the tongue in the groove of a ceiled room. You
pirate OF my services to the Republicans-yOu who
saved the day for them a year ago. and enabled
them to enact this damnable Payne-AIdrich law,
with its tax of so per cent ON automobiles and
100 per cent. on blankets.
There never was solitary moment when any
Republican whomsoever had just cause to doubt
my cordial detestatiOn Of his party's policies, and
my resolute determination to combat them to the
limit of my power. Not Republican that breathes
would dare to approach me with the proposition
which carried you and Livingston into the Re-
publican Camp, last Spring!
You have gone over my Congressional record
with microscope Bill, and you couldn't find a
flaw in it-NOT ONE! How keen must have been
your virtuous disappointment!
If [ had done much for the Republicans I'd
have influence with them-such as you have, Bill.
l have none, and seek none
A lonely man. politically, have stood, immov-
ably, on the principles which were mine at the be-
ginning, and which will be mine to the end.
In 1898, Bill, you knew as much of the color
line speech and the refusal to enter the Demo-
cratic Caucus in Washington, as you know in
1910 Whatever my ofense was whatever the
moral turpitude, you knew then, more perfectly
than you recall it now. Vet, when went to
your town, Lexington, to make Populist speech,
you most heartily invited to become your
guest. 1 accepted the invitation, broke bread
with you, and slept under your roof.
The fact that you did So Bill, is the highest and
best evidence that you knew l had been guilty of
nothing to forfeit a gentlemans regard. The
fact that you now stoop to pick up and fling at
me the decayed and half-fOrgotten ISLANDERS, of
the period antedating my visit to your home, is
proof that you have forgotten the laws Of hospi-
tally well the first principles of honest
politics.
AS to the Negro question, l shirk nothing. At
that time the black man was voter, and the
contending factions of whites competed for his
support Both sides were infamed with passion
and went too far. Milton Reese put Tom Gads-
den, the negro to making public speeches, against
us; and we had to Doyle. We did not begin
it, Doyle made speech in Thomson, until after
we had protected him from violence because of
alleged offensive language at other places. The
speech he made in Thomson not considered
insulting, and there were no demonstrations
against him because of it.
There were but two ways of settling this Ne
gro question Either the colored must be
given the political privileges guaranteed him i'm
the supreme law; or, he must be put entirely out
of politics.
We Populists believed that, if the color line
wiped out, the negro would divide in poll