Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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VI M McL u*' " ,;*v ?. ? ? " '- \* "J "Cyc Loves Man Bee v.* v: . an Unmitieo Into CI ' / is * The following letter written by Cy- j clone Mack and addressed to the edi-. tor of The Pee Dee Advocate, the i newspaper in Mack's home town of Benettsville, S. C., will give the people of this section some insight into the political situation in tlje state of South Carolina and the situations overcome by Blease during the time that he was governor of the state. The letter follows: ' Mr. Editor: In; your issue of July 20th, I wrote; defending the pardoning record of' I rirtvomAr I sunnose if there is any one man in South Carolina who has suffered for steadfastly defending and supporting Cole L. Blease I' am the man. #?? ? j "When Blease and Featherstone were running for governor I worked overtime for Featherstone and was very bitter and prejudiced against Blease. Why? Because up to that time I looked upon the "Columbia State" as the source of wisdom and veracity. I thought it was almost in fallible and could say no wrong. I cj was like thousands of people in South Carolina toda^S-who know not why .they hate Blease and are so bitter against him. But now I knoiv that this corporation sheet with its hireling editor listening to his master's voice like the little dog in the Victrola has crystalled hate in their hearts as it did inj mine. I didn't know that the "Columbia State" was raised up to fight Ben Tillman and the Reform party that was trying to redeem the state from Ring Rule. Thousands of people in South Carolina today don't know why it is that gy this paper has continually hounded vv'jtod traduced, maligned and vilified, ^^ efaraed, slandered and poured out v:iM?c ntrated damnations on him all these years. They believe what the "State" has taught them that Gover- ' nor Blease is a vile, hard-hearted, disreputable reprobate, a drunkard, sponsor of harlotry, a gambler and an inventor of evil things, who has changed the truth of God into a lie, and for this cause God has given him to vile affections. No, that is not so, but I will give it to you in a nutshell. It is not because the "State" loves South Carolina, and the interests of the people, but it is because Cole L. Blease defended and worked for Jim Tillman for killing Gonzales for doing the very same thing to him the "State" has been doing for Blease ever since?misrepresenting, defaming contorting and trying to assassinate bis character. \ I was pastor of a little church in the suburbs of Columbia. Very often the chaplain of the penitentiary would get me to go over and preach for him. I never saw such misery, squalor and suffering in any place in my life. It was a shame to a civilized country. The hospital was full of poor unfortunate people dying with tuberculosis which they had contracted in that dirty, filthy, unsanitary knitting mill?South Carolina's tubercular incubator. Poor unfortunate men and women for whom the Lord Joans Chrisr had died, hired out to contractors to grind out dividends for Northern capitalists, and if they didn't make their tasks they were taken down to the leather house and unmercifully beaten. The people of South Carolina will never know how those convicts were overworked, beaten and mistreated until they stand at the judgment bar of God and see it flashed on the canvass of the uni verse. I was preaching there one day and a poor woman, with a broken heart, began to sob in a quiet suppressed way. Almost immediately a great big white livered. cowardly, soulless brute in the form of a guard jumped up and ran over to her saying, "Hush, hush, or I'll break your damned head." I was told by different parties that a woman one day was beaten and then kicked every step of the way from tve leather house to the mill. She died that afternoon. Of course the Pharisees will say it wasn't the wh taming and kb-kip?- thai killed her, but the toothache. I have bent down over the poor emaciated fellows with their eyes sunk in their / 7 / r en do ie Mack" :ause Of His Jh tied Scoundrel \ [ sockets of their heads ' and their breasts caved in, and tried to talk with them, but they were so nearly gone they could only look up with their poor pitiful faces and grunt. I One beautiful Sunday morning after I had preached, I was about to leave when an old negro, his head ripening for the cemetery and on the j crutches of decrepitude, came to me and in a voice trembling with weakness and age, he said, "Preacher man, I have been here thirty years in this awful place. I am very near eternity. I was never in a court house in my life until I got into the trouble that brought me here. My wife, three children and several grand, children are still living, and I don't want to die here, but with my family. I wrote sir, to the old*boss (referring to Governor Ansel) and asked him to have mercy on me, but he wouldn't hear my cry." Then he looked me in the eyes and said, "O please jine me in prayer that the good Lord will give us a pardoning governor." I promised to do so and went home and told Rena about the old negro and the awful condition of the penitentiary, and we knelt together and prayed that Featherstone might be elected. We thought he was the man who would have a kind heart who would help hundreds of those p^or people. So we prayed for weeks that God would give us a pardoning governor. I was in the Columbia hospital when Blease was elected and it almost broke my hear; because I looked upon him as% a demc-n and everything that was vile. When I got out of the hospital and went back to the parsonage I said to Rena, "Well, the Lord didn't hear our prayers." She said. "Yes, it is awful that a man like Blease is governor." and I thought it a shame and a disgrace. "One thing, however," said Rena, "I don't understand about this man?his home county Newberry has elected him for everything he has aspired to. He has been in the legislature for years, state senator, and mayor of Newberry, and now his county has given him an overwhelming vote for governor. There must be something good about this man." In a short time after his inauguration I wrote Governor Blease a letter and told him the condition of the penitentiary, and begged him to be merciful to those poor unfortunate people and go down and ascertain the condition for himself. Tlien I went to John Wharton, senator [ from Laurens, who was a friend of Blease and begged him to intercede for these prisoners. Listen, for the first time in the history of South Carolina the governor himself went to the penitentiary,* talked with the prisoners and found out for himself their condition. Yes, Governor Blease found men that were lost, without father, mother, brother, sister or friend to intercede for them, leit alone in the world behind stone walls and iron bars. He found hundreds dying with tuberculosis, scores were serving long sentences for minor offenses. He walked through the knitting mill and found the windows pulled down and covered with cobwebs ana as^ed why it. was so poorly ventilated. He received this answer. "Governor if we raise the windows the wind will break the threads." He said "Which is worth more?threads 'or human beings? Get those windows up and* get some ventilation in this place." In a few days when he asked the general assembly why it was that so many people were dying with tuberculosis in the penitentiary, requested them to abolish the knitting mill, and clean# up the place in general, you know what happened? eight men were set to work to scour, fumigate and make steril the knitting mill. In a few days afterwards I was present when some highbrowed women were being shown through. "When they reached the knitting mill the gentleman who was escorting them said: "Ladies does th> look like the awful place that it has been pictured by Blease and others?" They rolled their eyes like a dying calf and looked like they had bunions n Fc \ Explains leart?Once 77 ; But When C Found Him on their tongues and answered, "Xo. | no, this is perfectly clean and sanitary." I spoke up and said you ought to have seen it before Governor Blease cleaned it up. I want to get back to the old negro who begged me to "jine" him in prayer for a pardoning governor. In' a few days I wrote the letter to Governor Blease, he went down to the penitentiary, examined it, talked with the prisoners, and pardoned thirty of them. I picked up the paper which had the announcement and found my old negro in the list. Rushing into tjie house I called, "Rena, look here, Please has pardoned my negro and I several others." She looked at me and j;said, "Baxter, probably God heard j our prayers in electing Blease." If the general assembly had not '"ignored Blease when he asked them to abolish that knitting mill he would not have pardoned one half of those he did pardon, but the state was making money leasing the convicts and northern mill owners were coining wealth out of cheap labor, so they ig'nored him. Blease used the pardoning power to force a needed reform, and conscious of his rectitude of purpose when he was maligned and his motives impugned he went farther than he would have done otherwise. That is all there is to it. Right here is where I found myself feeling kindly toward Governor Blease and very often I would find myself defending him. At that time T was a little one-horse preacher on a hard scrabble circuit and one ot the poorest excuses for a speaker that ever stood before a congregation. 1 spluttered and splattered worse than a second-hand Victrola with a broken frecord. I was holding a meeting at a cotton mill church near the town of Newberry and Eugene Blease, who was ex-mayor, now a member of the 1 legislature and Cannon Blease who is 'sheriff of Newberry county came out and took me to their home, eiuerrtaine? me and lavished kindness upor me, their only motive being to assist a poor fellow who was trying to make good in the world. They never dreamed that the day would come when I would go from ocean to ocean and preach in some of the most influential churches in America. For the last eleven years the Blease family and I have been close friends. In my assocition with Eugene, Cannon and Cole I have found them to be the truest men it has been my privilege to meet. They can stand for the assessments of friendship as well as for the dividends. Walking down the railroad track near Newberry one morning I met an old man and tried to find out all I could about Cole Blease from him. I asked him what kind of fellow he was and the old man looked at me and said. "Son he would take the shoes off his feet to help a needy person." How true I have found that statement to be! In the greatest financial distress I was ever in. the darkest tunnel I ever passed through Cole L. Blease came to my rescue and helped build a bridge over which I ouk! march, emancipated and free. Xo man could say anything about Cole L. Blease that would knock the varnish off the back door of my faith in him. I have associated with him, have been in his home almost every month for eleven years, have done business with him. have sat in Ills room talking with him until 2 o'clock in the morning, and I have yet to see the first thing in his?life that is not . mpatible with a gentleman. He was one of the greatest legislators that ever stood on the floor of V* v ^/.nucol uecimKh' an/1 rmlrl c 41 v. ?iri ai uoo v ui vi,? u ixu ?? v v* a v.* j?u ? vmade this state one of its greatest governors had he not been handia d by a pin-headed, pea-nut brain set of three karat, partisan legislators, and hounded, misrepresented and maligned him through prejudiced newspapers. 1 don't see how a man with his temperament and kind heart has lived under the awful ibu:- . slander and lies heaped upon hint for several years as corporation newspapers with hireling editors and m j?f' ? ' >r B iHis AIL tought t For Circumstances I tofBe a Grec tin horn, pie counter, word-heeling, sewer rat politicians, vied with each other in slandering, impugning and vomiting out their gangrene upon | him. They make me think of a buz-1 zard that sails over the beautiful fields, orchards and vineyards. After a while it finds something that is black, putrefied and foul smelling and it lights upon it and begins to pull and pull and pull. A )ol of the South Carolina human vultures when they couldn't find anything black-and rotten in this man's life tried to make the public think they had. Like the buzzard -they flew over the kind heart, good traits and many virtues and lit on some little inconsistency of his boyhood days or some little mistake .or imperfection of his polii tical career (and everything humanity does is painted with imperfection) and they have pulled, pulled, pulled, and magnified, and Pharisee-like have strained at a gnat and swallowed a camel. They flew over the fact that he was a poor struggling boy who worked his way through college / ' 'and who stood at his dying father's bed and promised that one day he would be governor of South Carolina. They flew over the fact that Newberry county elected him for every office beTever asked for and that for years he was in the legislature and state senate, that that good old aristocratic/, feity of Newberry made him ' } mayor an overwhelming majority. They sailed over the fact that when South Carolina had voted for prohibition and they were trying to give us the f&ate dispensary instead, that it was Cole L. Blease who stood on the floors' of the general assembly and fought, for prohibition. He was a ideal oiHioTiist but the people of this state had asked for prohibition and he argued it was not right to give them a stone when they asked for bread so he stood and preached that we ought to have prohibition because the majority of the people wanted it. They have also sailed over the fact | that when the poor cotton mill people of South Carolina were working from six o'clock in the morning to six in the evening in poorly ventilated mills and were being commercialized and fed into the machines of industry to grind out dividends, when the bone and sinew and the life blood of poor little pale faced, enemic, overworked children were being capitalized, then it was that Blease worked and fought until better conditions and shorter hours were given to the mill people. They sailed over the fact that Blease worked for the betterment of rural schools, for the welfare of our old soldiers and better pay for our unperpaid school teachers. They flew over the fact tha^ Blease worked and | preached for lower taxes and had the will and nerve to veto useless and extravagant appropriations and if our general assembly had listened to Blease there would not have been thousands of dollars of unpaid taxes today in South Carolina. You can fool all the people some of the time, you can fool some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time. It has dawned on our people that taxes ! have doubled and tripled just as Blease prophesied they would under the Cooper-Manning administration, and unless economy and business efficiency is brought to bear on financial affairs this state is really headed for bankruptcy. They see that the real government is not the chief executive, state offices and legislators. The real power had passed from where it was placed by the constitution into the numerous boards and commissioners, appointed ' or elected at the behest of a small junta who have j their habitat not far from the Columbia StatV, whose share of the spoils is the state printing: at two hundred per cent, increase. The people of South Carolina knowhat Cole L. IJlease was one of the greatest governors the state ever had and the only governor we have had for years who was not a jumping-jnck and rubber stamp for the Columbia ring. You can ask his enemies and lease " i egiance. 'mer Governor brought Him it Man. most severe critics iL' he did not try ro reduce taxes by vetoing useless and extravagant appropriations and cutting the heads of an army of political leeches who were devouring the substance of the people, and they will answer in the affirmative, and ninetynine times out of a hundred the only fault they can find with him is that he pardoned so many prisoners. Probably he dfd pardon some men who ought not to have been pardoned but as I explained earlier in this letter he did it to enforce a needed reform . Governor Blease probably would not have been criticised so severely by hundreds of people if he had had a gizzard instead of a heart. I know that he pardoned seventeen hundred prisoners during his term of office. Lots of them were moral or mental 1 f a>? V* n tVi a cte f miln to LKJl H 11U111 LiiU OIUIC OHUUIU have made other provision. Others were good men but victims of circumstances while others were natural born criminals who were born wrong, ."but I know that lots of them were born again;"and born right. There are people who would sit in judgment on the Christ of God. I was preaching I 'one night and a man sat down in front with tears rolling down his face like bubbles on a mountain stream. After the service he walked up to me and said. "Mack, I know what it means to be pardoned twice, He looked me in the face while his breast 1 heaved like a bellows and said, "five years ago Gcd pardoned me at two o'clock in the morning in my cell in the Columbia penitentiary, and this afternoon Governor Blease gave me my second pardon." I have watched that man from that day until this and *he has walked right and kept straight. Harry Monroe, the man who led Billy Sunday to God. w^s a veggman and the Lord saved him one day in the penitentiary and a kind hearted governor pardoned him. Jerry McCaulev had served seven years of a fifteen years sentence. He was a natural born criminal, thief and thug. The Lord saved him one night in his cell and a Christian governor pardoned him. The Pharisees raised hell, but before he went to Heaven they named him in New 1 ork city? the Apostle to the Lost. John Callihan, who is now the superintendent of the Jerry MeCauley Mission in New York, had committed so many crimes and had so many aliases that he didn't know his real name, and Mrs. Clark (the wife of Col. Clark) of the Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago, led him to Jesus, and secured a pardon for him from the governor, and look what he is ,'ing for the Lord today. 1 could go on and give hundreds 01 illustrations like the above. When the Lord Jesus Christ came out of the infinitudes and walked the path of human life he looked upon poor fallen humanity, had compassion on them, and pardoned thieves, harlots, crooks, adulterers and law violators upon whom the sentence of death rested, and the only persons who raised a howl and criticised the Son of God for his pardoning record were the mildewed, white-washed, sanctimonious, hypocritical, law and order j Pharisees. I will say in conclusion that Cole; 'L. Blease stands for social and economic justice. He has never been found cooperating with the hired representatives of corporate or other in terests. Tom McLeod is the candidate of the machine?not the anti-Bleaae machine, but the machine of the gang that has the state by the throat in the interests of its own domination?the machine for which Manning and Cooler carried the flag. This machine is not so much opposed to Please as it is for WE, US AND COMPANY. If Blease was a rubber stamp, pliable and plastic, they would just as lief have Blease as anybody. Respectfully, B. F. McLENDON. ?Political Advertisement. (From the Yorkville Enquirer.) REMINISCENCES OF THE LONG AGO. "Heap S??f But Few Knows." By Uncle Josh. "Thy fate is the common fate of all. Unmingled joys here no man befall. Nature to each allots his proper share Fortune makes folly her peculiar care." Continuing our sketch of the vil lage in the Ion? a?o. On the north corner of now Main and Church strets, were the two-story 'building first built by Mr. John Meetze for a shoe shop which was the business conducted there by him tor some time, but later .was used for a store, which our decollection carries us back to .1. Wolf Arehart's running a store and bar-room in the lower story of said building, while Lawyer Brayer and DeGafarilla ran the Lexington Telegraph printing office up stairs, then the county paper, which was formerly founded by J. W. Randolph, of whom they had purchased the paper, good will, etc. They started out growing popular , with its management until their strong editorials were in favor of "Xonothingism" and perhaps other objections, to some individuals, although there were a number of "Nonothing men" in the villase and sur- ' j rounding country. At any rate, the sentiment was so strong: against them as men and publishers, that one night DeGafarella was burned in effigy on Main street, and he became so unpopular that both he and Mr. Brayer returned to Charleston from whence they came. Mrs. Brayer and her sister. Miss Kate McKay were excellent school teachers and were highly respected by our citizens who regretted to lose them from society, etc. Mr. G. Adolphus Fink who came here as a printer from North Carolina and purchased the printing business and outfit and changed the name to The Lexington Flag. Mr. Fink as we have before stated purchased the lot now where Mr. C. M. Efird's residence is, on lower Main street, and built a two-story building, the first floor for printing office and the second for his home. He was publishing a good county paper which was growing in usefulness and popular with the people, but the Civil War came on, and Mr. Fink was so enthused, felt it his duty to join the army and participate in fighting for his country and the rights for which we were contending. All was well until Sherman came through when the office, his home and all possessions were destroyed by fire. He was then like many of our subjugated citizens, and "moved West" settling in Georgia. Continuing on our subject: Next to I the building' on the rm-ner wue Ephriam Copley's home. He was one of our oldest citizens although he had his peculiarities he. had a good 'heart and meant well. Besides being our town butcher, he purchased poultry. eggs and perhaps all kinds of country produce which he sold in Columbia. Uncle Jack Corley, colored, who was well known by everybody was his dependence in trade. Mr. Corley's butcher pen was on the grounds now where the factory village is located, where also one of the first Corley homes was built, just outside _-f the West corner 01 the butcher pen. There was also a home occupied down below the "Well Curb." on ihe east side of the branch, near now where several of the Corley's rest, some in marked and some unknown graves, buried there in the old family grave yard. After the location of the town and the place was building up Major Ephriam Corley built in town on the lot first mentioned some distance from the old Granny Corley home and beyond the court house, where he remained until his death. The place, like others, was put in coals and ashes by Sherman. But through the energy and business efforts of Mr. I Scott Hendrix he has a large brick store building on portion of this lot. In Aunt Deby Frank low Corley Uncle Eph. had a devout and faithful companion, kind and noble hearted. J Some times she would remonstrate | with him in his angry and peevish ! ways that always fanned a s;>ark of | consideration which would bring hin> | in the bounds of right on calm reJ flection. j They owned several slaves, three i noted characters. Uncle Jack. Dick I j and Adam. j Further up street adjoining was ! Mr. Christian Franks home. John | Hendrix. Tommie Hendrix. the tailor. i PLAY AT CFXTUKYELEJ:. V A play entitled "And, Home Came Ted' will be presented ar < mterville school house. September !>. IJtlll. beginning at s o'clock. prompt. I'otiifi and spend two h* wrs" of rt-ui n.'i. A ' small c.lm v. hi b 1 urged, j Proceeds will go to the bcueiit of the school. Uefrcshments served. i