The Alaska daily empire., 1915-08-03
AN INTIMATE INTERVIEW
 wITH A GREAT AMERICAN
tBy Edward l.. Wade in skagway
 Alaskan)

(By Edward h. Wade in Skagway
 Alaskan)
 Skagway has had many interesting as well as interested visitors this summer. Lured by the spice of TO. nance. golden dreams of wealth or the spell Of the Yukon" they have driited in from an points of the com pass.
 The steamship Sophia. sailing last Thursday. had on her passenger list United States Senator Benj. R. Till man. of South Carolina. For over twenty years "Pitchfork Ben" has loomed large in the public eye Go back as far as the headwaters of the Savannah and ask one of the wool hat. one.ganus mountain hoos. iers about Ben" Tnlman and he will look at you with whitening scorn. Not Ito know Ben Tnlman with them is an offense which is unforgivable They may be as unlettered as the back of a tombstone. may be the habitat of the hookworm. these gaunt. sallow crackers" of the Carolina mountains but they can unreel enough political "reminiscences in an hour about the "ono-eyed ploughboy from Pigeon Roost" to nu volumes. They remem- ber the Tillman-Irby campaign; tue rise and fall of the Farmers Al. lance" on whose broad back many a cornfield politician rode into pow. CT. and they live to whittle sticks. spit "bacca' and tell how Ben Tillman skinned the folks who lived in the big houses, and hung their hides out to crackle in the sun.
 As ! scrutinzed carefully the aged Senator, and as ! recalled with vivid ness the sulphurous days when Ben. Tnlman stood upon the stump" arm ed to the teeth, huriing at his enc mics fighting epithets. denouncing the Southern aristocracy in its very citadel, appealing to passion preiu- lice and age-old hatred-a political Ajax defying the lightning there sunk deep into my consciousness an overwhelming sense of the atrophy Of long years How well l remember him fifteen years ago even-an ag. ! gressive, sturdy, unyielding acetic figure-from whose lips no honey of Hymittus-but rather the gall of bit- terness. How his foes winced un- der his verbal lash. Every inch of ground he gained. every advance he made was purchased by indominatable win power No invertebrate ever could have stood where Ben rllman stood
 Wilson, he said to me- Wilson win be renominated; reelected That is conceded by any one with an idea above an oyster He has made good He is the biz figure of contemporary politics. Big business, little busi- ness. and people with no business at all are thanking their stars that Wood row Wilson is at the helm We are keeping out of this European sham bles. but if we do get into it. let me tell you something" and the fires Of that fighting spirit of the early nine ties glowed ir his eye while his words cracked life a rifle shot, "When Un- cle sam deals the cards the jackpot will be opened"
 "So you want to know why Bryan got out of the Cabinet. and what there was back of it," and just the shadow of cynical smile lit the rugged face. wrinkled like an English wal nut CT will tell you Bryan is a great man-put that in your pipe and smoke it He is scholar. and am orator, and very clever politician. Had he not been a wonder worker Wilson would not be today in the White House. No political paryenu could have swung that Baltimore conven-