The Wilmington morning star., 1945-09-10
BY WESTBROOK PEGLER
Copyright, 1s4s, BY King Features syndicat,

OF MISSISSIPPI ana lne CITY OF New YORK,
As Hitherto remarked in these essays,
number of demagogic New York politicians
engaged in the current mayoralty campaign,
and each coveting the votes of immigrants
and their children as segregated blocs, pounc-
ed on an opportunity to denounce Senator
Theodore Bilbo, of Mississippi. Mr.. Bilbo has
not the remotest connection with this local
election, but many New York politicians and
potboilers of the more or less frankly COM
munistic papers have made political capital
by denouncing him as a benighted bigot and
Mississippi as backward state.
This propaganda against Mississippi began,
according to my recollection, in the early
days of prohibition when most of the literate
New Workers were given to feel an unde-
served sense of superiority by the mischiev-
Gus hippancies of Henry Mencken who spoke
derisively of Mississippi and other states of
the Southern tier. as the Bible Belt Mississippi
was dry, of course, as was her right, but
she exceeded her right and angered US vets
in New York by presuming to dictate that we
had no right to remain wet
About the same time, the modern Ku Klux
Khan. which was racket like many of our
unions. swept the South and then moved
strongly into Indiana, Ohio and New Jersey.
It exploited 1oo-per cent Americanism in
such bigoted and oppressive and mercenary
who were 100 per cent American in their de-
votion to the United States but did not sub
scribe to the persecution of Jews, Catholics,
Negroes and persons born abroad, so here
was more propaganda against Mississippi.
However, as Americans the people Of Mis-
sisippi owe no apologies to the residents of
the city of New York She has, to be sure, her
illiterates, but SO have we and our vaunted
public school system is such that in some
schools we have had not mere childish mis-
chief but serious crime, including killings,
even by little girls and many neighborhoods
are terrorized by young gangs. If Mississippi
has slum areas, New Yorks are worse and
with less excuse because Mississippi is cot
ton, yam and watermelon state whereas New
York has great foreign commerce and great
manufa curing business and we draw millions
of dollars from all the other states by our
hotel and amusement business. The voluntary
enlistment rate for our last two wars has
been notably high in the Southern or benign
ed states, including Mississippi. cannot dis
cuss her general crime rate but if it were
spectacular we would have heard about that,
whereas all New Workers know that there
are some sections of the city into which a
stranger strays at night only at the risk of his
life, Notwithstanding force OF $4,000 police
men.
In patronizing Mississippi and in expressing
contempt for her people because of the quality
OF her statesmen in Congress, New Workers
have deceived themselves. It would be wiser
to consider the quality of New York's political
leaders or bosses and ask whether a city
which elects LaGuarda mayor three times.
elects Senator Wagner repeatedly, and Con-
gresham Vito Marcantonio has any excuse
to sheer at state which sends to Washington
a Theodore Bilbo and John Rankin.
Among our other Bosses we have Sidney
Hlllman, whose own old colleagues of the
political union movement repudiated him last
year charging that he had gone over to the
communists who certainly cannot be compar.
ed to the Mississippi patriots in the quality
OF their citizenship. And then we have David
Duolnsky OF the garment workers, who, like
Hlllman. found here asylum from oppression
in Europe but in common with manv other
professional unioneers of alien birth, was too
preoccupied to join the Mississippi volunteers
in either war
Duolnsky is more boss and power than
a Leader, and the members of his union are
SUBJECTS, a condition which the people of Mis-
slslppl resisted and abolished by desperate
force in the period of the first Ku Klux Khan.
Among my treasures is a bound volume
OF testimony taken in the congressional in
vestigation of the Ku Klux Khan in the South,
begun in 1872, which explains the old feeling
OF Mississippi and other Southern states.
The northern rascals known as radicals and
carpet baggers, swarmed into Mississippi
whose white population was, of course, broke.
The cost of legislative session jumped from
$4,000 to $780, 900. The cost of assessing taxes
went from $780, 900 in prosperous days to $175,-
600 in a period of bitter poverty. Public
printing formerly had cost $4,000 and was
now $4,000 year under the carpet.baggers.
The white Southern men had lost the vote
ana the new governors, elected by the former
slaves, appointed sheriffs, constables, county
treasurers and assessors, many of whom were
absolute strangers who hated the Southern
white man and robbed and prosecuted him
and his family without mercy
The legislature thus elected then required
that there should be public school for every
70 children and school-master at an average
OF $50 month and 'these learned gentlemen
required handsome edifices, bells and walnut
furniture brought from Cincinnati and else
where" In one county, 200 such schools were
the entire property in the state and some OF
the people had to sell off their horses and
furniture to pay the taxes.
submit suggestion that the memory of
this ordeal was communicated to the children
of that generation and, in diminishing vivid
ness to their children and that when a few
demag ogs i n New York, although not t h
people of New York. sheer at the people of
Mississippi for their Bilbos and Rankins, the
Mississippi citizens bethink Themselves of La
Guardia, Wagner, M e n tn 10, Hillman
Dubinskv and others.