Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1922-05-05
PALMETTO POLITICS
Comprehensive Review OF Peculiar
Record.
STRUGGLE BETWEEN CONTRARY IDEAS

Past and Where Progress of Correct
Principles Is Slow, but Steady and
Sure.
By ]. C. Derieux, in The Survey.
Cole L. Blease will be running
again next summer for the office of
governor Of South Carolina. The boil
weevil has reached the peak of his
destructive activities in that state.
Taxes have been going up and
the price of cotton has been coming
down. War psychology has waned,
and in its stead there is waxing
public temper of the sort which
speakers like to denounce and dispose
of as the spirit of unrest. Therefore
Blease is abroad.
The anti -Blease man whose beliefs
and desires, wishes and judgment, are
synonymous will tell you that Blease
is politically dead. The more obsery-
ant man may not agree, for he knows
that Blease, a personality, represents
BleaseisTn, a condition.
The strength of Blease. the most
talked of man South Carolina has pro-
duced in a generation, and the causes
of Bleaseism, arise from several sour
ces. Chief among them are the social
and economic history of the state, and
the quaint manner in which the one
political party. the Democratic con-
ducts its campaigns.
The primary is all-important. The
general election is a mere form, since
there Is but one set of nominees. A
rule of the party is that candidates
shall make tour of the counties and
speak in each one. They travel en-
masse, adhering to q schedule ar
ranged by the executive committee.
This round of speech making and
hand shaking comes always in the hot
summer months, when mems tempers
are, at best, eccentric. But this Is the
slack time for the farmers, and South
Carolina is an agricultural state. The
county, campaign method
is decided advantage to the stump
speaker who can "whoop 'em up" 1t
discourages the man who has no dis
position for the hustings. Blease is a
past master in arousing enthusiasm,
and his enemies have often played
into his hands by hurting at him ac-
cusations which gave him the chance
to shout back his reprisals from the
stump. He thrives on unsagacious
combat. He is strong in invective.
He has personality, political acumen
and political courage. He sprang
from the masses and he knows them.
He calls them by their first names.
In South Carolina politics Is more
than politics. 1t is a recreation, a
part of life, a thing in which all are
interested, a medium through which
men express themselves. A political
meeting in warm" year is to be an
ticipated as the coming of q circus.
Men gather at the county seat from
villages and farms miles away. The
parking spaces are filled with buggies,
wagons and automobiles. Most of
those who come are men who work
with their hands.
All assemble at the speaking
grounds. The candidates-debonair
hopeful-weave back and forth among
the crowd telling the kind of jokes
that only candidates can tell, smoking
the kind of cigars that only candidates
can smoke and pretending a keen per-
sonal interest in the private affairs of
voters, as only candidates can pretend
1t is a patient assembly; q wait of an
hour or two is a small matter. AS
likely as not the cotton mills have
shut down for the day. Friends are
meeting friends, and politics, the top
ic most common to all, is being
discussed. 1t gives the man from the
Punkintown neighborhood a chance to
tell his friend from Possum Kingdom
"how the land lays" The voter from
the upper section tells the man from
the other side of the county that his
candidate "ain't no more fit for office
than q slop pail is for a sugar bowl"
And so men chat with one another.
Speaking time arrives and candi-
date arises. He is introduced by the
county chairman who, after few re-
marks about the fair name of that
county, bespeaks for all "respecta-
BILE" hearing. The candidate begins
his address, telling how he was born
on the farm, grew up amidst the
pangs and privations Of poverty,
read by a light 'ood" knot perhaps,
had only limited schoolip', and how
all his day he has cherished an ambi-
ton to serve his fellow man, to gain
for himself. through thus serving, the
office to which he aSpires. Possibly
he promised his sainted mother he
would do this. Possibly also, he has
run before-for political ambition dies
hard: it reincarnates like Il cat. If
so, he will thank the sturdy yeomanry
of that great county for the handsome
vote given him two years before when
though my opponent was elected,
had every reason to feel gratified be-
cause of the confidence you expressed