The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1918-09-03
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IS aBLEASEISM DEAD?
cooper's Great Opportunity


Bleaseism is not dead. 1t will not
be dead until anti -Bleaseism is dead,
and that will be when the thoughtful
and more patriotic people of the for
mer factions in the state and the
great progressive common people of
the state refuse longer to allow them
: selyes to be made the tools of design
ing Office seekers on either the one side
or the other.
Looking Backward.
We must needs look back little
WAYS, and know something Of the po-
Etical past.
The poorer classes of the people
in South Carolina came out OF the
war with nothing. Labor was cheap
and the white man with his family to
support and family to rear for all
these years has stood a poor chance
when it is considered that he has had
!. to compete with his hands against the
I former free labor of the community.
Many of them have yielded to what
appeared the inevitable and have been
content to seek only their daily bread,
leaving posterity to take what was
left behind. Others have tried to
grow up. Some have succeeded,
some have foundered, and some have
failed. The stern necessities of life
have made of the most of them, un-
i'll recent years, hewers of wood and
drawers of water. They hae been
denied the opportunities of an edu-
cation. In fact there has been little
means of securing an education by
the offspring of these people. They
have read nothing; they have had
but little to read. And out of their
ignorance and dislike for those more
fortunate men of the state, many of
whom have used their talents solely
for their own use, and who have not
been willing to treat them as either
political or social equals, resulting in
suspicion, and even, we may say: &C.
tual animosoties, has come a fertile
field for some of the more intelli-
gent of the poorer class, who have
sought sometimes to rise to promi-
nence in the state by playing upon
the dislikes, prejudices and animosi-
ties of their fellowmen, and by max
ing these honest but sorely misled
people, oftimes, believing that the
other class was still militant and at
their throats.
No Good in Nazareth.
It is true that the former landed
proprietors who before the war lived
through the involuntary servitude of
the negro, life of ease, came out of
the war almost as penniless as their
less fortunate neighbors. But they
were still dominant in politics as they
had been before the war. From this
class had come all the political lead
! ers in the pre-war period, and from it
, after the war, and during recon
struction, and for years thereafter
came these same leaders. Many OF
the men who were in public life were
: men of parts and they did much fol
the state. But there was still that
, Intolerance for the white trash
which had existed in the pre-war per
,iod, especially amongst those of thu
former aristocracy who had the leas'
intelligence, and who had. been bor1
and reared to think that no goot
could come out Of Nazareth. These
people assisted by their taodies, lick
spittles and camp-followers were ant
i are today as intolerant of the men il
the other class as these have been o:
81 she former.
Good men there have been in al
8 4 parties, and good men there hav'
been, and are, in all factions in Souti
8 Carolina, men who have sought t.
8 serye the state and it alone, but tn