The Richmond Virginian. (Richmond, Va.) 1910-1920, 1912-12-07
A DUAL PERSONALITY.

Whatever may think OF the opinions
Of Governor Cole Blease Of South Carolina
and OF the manner In which he expresses
them IT must be admitted that he has broken
into the headlines more than any other gov
erncr at the conference in session here. He
has made every one who attended listen to
him and has been the center OF interest at
nearly every meeting.
To do this, OF course, one does not need
to be an especially able man. He does not have
10 give voice 10 some and startling truth.
He does not have to be a brilliant orator or an
attractive personality. He may be man of
average intelligence and of mediocre ability
who gains surprised hearing by the serious
enunciation of out-worn fallacy and by
an impassoned appeal to bestial impulses.
This is Cole Bleases way.
The South Carolina chief executive, how
ever, gains attention also by open exhibit
nishes US with an interesting study and, as
a result with an interesting speculation as 20
the character OF the people of a State which
would twice elect man SO violently opposed
to accepted canons OF thought and morality and
SO violently champion of out-worn ideas.
Listening to Cole Bease one rapidly loses
the preconceived prejudices against the man
and the thought comes that he has been done
an injustice by his opponents When he takes
his stand on Holy Writ and opposes divorce
for any cause when he tells with passion
evidently sincere of the barbarfc conditions
in a.
carriages of justice which have made 1t neces-
sary for him to pardon thousands, the sym
pathy OF the nearer goes out to him and won
der goes that he should have been twice hon
ored by his people. When he uses language
in the presence of public assemblage in which
are many women, which no gentleman would
use doubt comes. It is difficult TO believe
that a man who would maliciously insult his
hearers and would without neces-
sty make use of language women should not
hear can be sincere and honest in his convic-
lions. He shows the cloven hoof In this man.
ner and in the utterance of sentiments, which
II put into execution, would mean the legalized
murder of hundreds OF innocent people. It'll
makes one wonder If a man who would slay
without warrant of law would not violate the
law and his oath to free crimin>ls to his own
gain. AT times his hearers wonder why such
a fight should have been made upon him: at
other times the wonder is that any considera-
BILE number of people of his State should have
voted for him.
The explanation may be that he is neither
a demagogue sincere lover of the peo-
pie, but peculiar mixture of both. There
must be some truth in his description OF the
woeful conditions in his own State or $4,000
people would not have voted for man so
manifestly unfit for the office. except that no
other and better man would champion the cause
Of the down-trodden. II the cotton mills of
South Carolina are really tuberculosis in
cubators"; II children are overworked and
men and women underpaid; IL the poor and
ignorant and friendless are given long terms
in the pententiary for minor offenses it is not
his voice against these inhumanities should
be elected, even though he himself be a !
vulgarian. believer in lynching and other
forms of lawlessness. Against him would be
the henefciaries OF the conditions and those
whose shocked sense OF refinement and pro-
priety and love OF the law blinded them to the |
manifest necessity for reform. and with him
must have been the vulgar and the lawless
and the clean and upright whose sense OF
justice outweghed these obvious faults In the
candidate.
As The Vretatan once remarked there Is q