Clinch Valley news. [volume] (Jeffersonville, Va.) 18??-2019, 1912-07-12


wide qualifications rooted in billions
of wealth.
Fresh from the Republican conven.
ton in Chicago, with songs of victory
and an air of perfect assurance, this
sexless, gold-inspired Plunderbund
came to Baltimore. The cards were
stacked. The steam-roller was oiled
and spiked. Drawn up in battle-ine
was an army of intriguers, manipu-
lators. wire-pullers, pug bodyguards,
professional corruptionists, Ryans
and rascals, Belmonts, DULLES, and
bartenders, scheming Senators and
fawning Congressman, Clark Street
Hinky- Dnks and Bowcry gutter
snipes-withal a stupendous cohesive
composite of corruption that had never
known defeat and was ready, yea
eager, to crush progressive democracy
as under a mighty dead-fall.
The program was arranged, the
convention opened, and time called.
The thrice defeated, thrice armed
Bryan appeared sing handed on the
platform rs the peoples challenger
In the first skirmish he met with APP
parent defeat. Progressive democracy
was Knocked through the ropes. The
Tammany packed galleries yelled their
delight. The Lewises and Blythcs and
all the paid prostitutes of Privilege
wired their craped and crushing obit-
uaries. The Hearsts and Wattersons
shouted hallelujahs. The Roanoke
Times took another hitch and the
TimeslDispatch threw n rapturous fit.
The beaten Bryan smiled himself out
at the back door of the convention
hall and his friends threw up the
sponge in disappointment and despair.
The Ryans and Belmonts and Murphys,
the Martins and Swansons and Park
ers, winked at each other with I'M
restrained and "wasn t-it-easy" COM
placence. And the Tammany tiger beat
a malicious tattoo with the ringed tin
of his tail.
So much for the first round. But
the vidette who had innocently smiled
himself out by the rear door, came
back again by way of the center
aisle. This time he was in a generals
uniform, and the lightning of battle
was in his eye. lie rallied his routed
forces and pointed to Mars as he
shone like n ruddy shield on the Lions
breast. Eros went out through
window and Jove came down through
the rafters
1t was battle of blood-spiling and
bruises that lasted for six DAYS.
Three hundred cannon threw up their
emetic, and twenty thousand muskets
flung their pills like hail, to make a
bloody diuretic. Under the comman
ding generals, the allied forces
charged and were swept back; they
fought from ambush and were moved
down in the open; they plotted and
thrust and threatened. Bogus tele-
grams sped like poisoned arrows from
thousand quivers. Tons of red-inked
newspapers with insidous scare heads
were distributed by excited fiunkies.
Floods and Stanchfelds were dispatch-
ed from the ranks to vomit gorges of
hate and vituperation. "Death.cries
drowning in the battles roar!" Trick,
treachery. trade, sneaked from stand
ard to standard. Every marked card
known to the political game was
played. Eastsidc hoodlums were hir.
ed to rattle and piking topers made
drunk to confuse.
The result? Money and the Mob
went down for the count, and under
the arch of triumph stood w. ]. like
GLORY smiling Ger a sea of slaugb-
ter.
The atmosphere has now sufficient
ly cleared to permit one to sift from
the concfliting jargon of depreciation
and Qualification, the confusion
of superlatives. the outstanding fact
that friend and foe agree that BRYAN
held the convention in the hollow of
his hand-that it bent to his will rs
"a steed that knows it's rider" He
reshuffled the stacked deck and forced