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' - --k ELEASEISM A CONDITION I RATHER THAN A THEORY For the May issue of the Survey A Graphic, James C. Derieux, formerly executive secretary to Governor R A. Cooper, now a member of the ?staf? of the New York Globe, has written, under the title of "Crawling Toward the Promised Land," a notable article for which "Bleaseism," so-called, is the theme. Mr. Derieux, himself a South Carolinian, has, in writing this article, shown a keen insight into the conditions, historical, social and economic. which are responsible for what is known as "Bleaseism"?of which, by the way. Cole L. Blease is 1 only the titular head. The conditions which brought about "Bleaseism" were deeply rooted before Blease himself was out of his early teens and will, doubtless, exist long years after he has ceased to be a political factor in South Carolina. To it he has merely given a name by which it is, for the time being to be distinguished? and perhaps by any other name it would sound as sweet. The following excerpts are taken from the article. "Cole L. Blease will be running again next summer for the office of governor of South Carolina. The boll n-oovil ^95 roarhed the neak 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 a waxing public temper of the sort which speakers like to denounce and dispose of as the spirit of unrest. Therefore Biease is abroad. "The anti-Blease man whose beliefs and desires, wishes and judgment, are synonymous will tell you that Biease is politically dead. The more observant man may not agree, for he knows that Biease, a personality, represents Bleaseism, a condition. "The strength of Biease, the most talked of man South Carolina has riTn^iiouil in cj o-^ri r ?t">,. arvrl the jpi VUUVVU ?* V* J, , causes of Bleaseism, arise from several sources. Chief among them are the social and economic history of the state, and the quaint manner in which the one political party, the Democratic, conducts its campaigns." The article continues to explain that the primary is all important, the general election only a matter of form, and refers to the antiquated rule that the candidates shall make a tour of 'the counties, speaking in each one. The county-to-county campaign method is a decided advantage to trie stump speaker who can 'whoop 'em up,' continues Mr. Derieux. "It discourages the man who has one disposition for the "hustings. Blease is a past master in arousing enthusiasm and his enemies have often played into his hands by hurling at him accusations which gave him the chance to shout back his reprisals from the stump. He is strong in invective. He has personality, political acumen and political courage. He sprang fiom the masses and he knows them. He 4- V? v? r? t- n o w> rio ' ^ ICUIS ixitrm uicii uuiuco. Some space is devoted to a description of a South Carolina campaign meeting?all of which is familiar. Continuing: "One after another the candidates speak. Some urge this, some that; some attack one thing, some another . . .. There are points upon which there is unanimity . All were born on the farm. All favor 'justice tempered with mercy.' All stand for 'law'n' order.' They have all followed the old gray mule ... up and down the cotton and corn rows, have seen the sun rise up in the morning and i+ eor?lr KoTiinH vin WUiRCU Ull U1UI1 lb muu UVU1..U j western hills." There is always appeal, too, for the old Confederate veteran. "The time arrives for Blease to speak. There is a wave of animation. Any stranger could pick out Blease men from those who oppose him, for their faces are expectant. 'Tell 'era about it, Coley'; shouts a man in the crowd; 'Goddermighty ain't he a man'," says another. "Blease pulls up his sleeves, looks over the audience, and launches into his subject. He denounces his enemies and sticks to his friends, declares he has nothing to explain and k nothing to apologize for, hits hard at thp hostile* nress. attacks high taxes and those in office who opposed them, ft gives his opinion of the creation of r new offices to be filled with political pets/ declares his devotion to the working man's cause, and so on until the driving:, dynamic, concluding rhetoric is drowned in cheering. He knows the chords to play upon. He knows the popular mind and the little things that effect it. He can be seri OUS or can laugn, can ue senumemai or vitriolic, according to the subject in hand. He can express the grouch, es, the hopes, the irritations, the ambitions of those who believe in him. A vote for Bleaes, as the writer explains, is not so much an affirma 'live ballot, as ir is a vote of protest ?"of protest against conditions that existed before the War of Secession." A picture of the charming civilization that grew up in South Carolina prior to the sixties is deftly drawn the cavalier days, the days of aris , tocracy and culture. "The War of Secession <>roke up the tranquilty of southern colonial life .... and destroyed utterly the institution of slavery, upon which the agrarian masters had depended. The great plantations collapsed. The cavalier, if he survived to come home at all, came into a devolution that demanded a fresh beginning. If his home had stood in the path traversed by General Sherman s army, he came home to look wistfully upon a pile of ashes at each end of which stood a gaunt chimney?gianr gravestones left there to mark the place where a manner of life that now was dead once existed. 'Sherman monuments,' they were called.'' But, as the writer points out, the end of the war was not the end of the trouble for South Carolina. Reconstruction followed hard upon its heels. There was the carpet-bagger and the scallawag, negro domination, the General Assembly in which negroes were in the majority. "Not until 1876 did the state finally emerge from the nightmare of reconstruction. Then, under the leadership of Wade Hampton, lieutenantgeneral in the Confederate States army and a powerful man of the old aristocracy, the native white population regained the reins of government. "There was a breathing spell, when men contented themselves with getgetting rid of a bad thing. Men looked at social arrnagements as they looked upon them before the war, but still there was no apparent friction. Reconstruction had bound all white men together in a common cause and had made of the Democratic party the white man's party Fields were again tilled nda life was becoming reasonably happy. . . . There rnmp other p-overnors of the old school. The state moved along smoothly. The whites were supreme and the negroes as a mass rather enjoyed the relief from a condition into which they had been suddenly thrust without preparation. Possibly life was running too smoothly, for education and other essentials were neglected. The great trouble in the past became a state of mind, and the fine gentlemen who managed the affairs of rrnvDvnmorf n n inflllPTlPP ?ufffictnt to effect a rejuvenation of social and economic life Meanwhile the rural crossroads mer-! chants was becoming a factor in the economic life of the state. He lived bv virtue of a bad, but unavoidable I J0P I i . ! $0$$' I >/ " ; *88i I Until you | ' how i well : i Cord ti able at cation; r)_ x^nc?> . ing Car Caroli: 5 03 n jr A - JVIA maSSSS^SSSBBBBSSmSSSi^S system. He supplied the small farni-'< ers with iheir food and ihe:r fertili- ; y.t-v, taking a 1 i?.*n or mortgage on } crops. Then he : <>ok tin* crops. Country stores were social centers for men who Withered about them in leisure momenis and talked. The church supplied something of a social life for the women. There was nothing busrfing about life in those days. > People were mostly poor, but fairiv j happy. They didn't care much. . . . The state was sunning itself. . -t " Rpniamin R. Tillmir. drove in the ? next mile post. This strong:, high c tempered, caustic tongued man?real democrat and real leader?appeared c in the eighties and early nineties as t the Moses to lend the 'wool hat and s one gallus boys' out from the rule of > the only family Pharaohs and into s their political own. 'The bottom rail f will be on top' was a rallying cry of \ the day. Tillman attacked the gov- I ernment, which, he said, emanated c from the Episcopal church?the fash- f ionable church of the state?and a South Carolina college, the institu- p tion to which many of the old regime f went for instruction. He flew into c the face of the astonished and staid s order of things. The conservative }: papers arrayed their denunciatory s ndiectives asrainst him. He intro- i duced undignified methods into pub- p lie life. He used violent language, 1; and trampled carelessly upon the tra- e ditional sense of propriety n He brought the wool hat boys into n consciousness of themselves. He ig- It nited the fires of class feeling that c had smouldered imperceptibly. He was the irresistible embodiment of ii the white masses, and twice he was F elected governor. ... So strong E was the Tillmanic force that it ac- ii tually unseated from the United p States the state's idol, General Wade f Hampton. ... (] ' There was another political re- h lapse, another return to 'normalcy.' n The state was becoming more pros- f perous The cotton factory c had appeared in the cotton fields. . . o The cotton factory offered the small I farmer a chance to get money for his f labor, and he wanted money?he and f the mountaineer. . . .So out of the n mountains there came the operatives 7 for the mills in the Piedmont section, d and from farms here and there came T operatives for the factories around a Columbia and throughout Horse Creek valley. . . .The small farmer q was still living without much hope. a He was always a year behind. With ^ the cotton he gathered he paid his 0 supply merchant, and immediately,, started making new accounts. He was a one-crop planter because he r knew no other crop to grow, and be- 0 cause cotton always had a cash market The mill operative was put c at work that gave him no chance for <1 V you ride in it yours cannot possibly rea] ? t 1 1 1 ^ J -emarkable the good JV1 is in its riding qualit res, con-skid front and rear; disc steel wheels, demoun rim and at hub; drum type lamps; Alemite lubr motor driven electric horn; unusually long spring F. O. B. Detroit, revenue tax to be added: Tou , SS85; Roadster, $865; Coupe, 51385; Sedan, $148 la Auto Con tTheQood VII T T AW ? & eif-expression, l:ving anion;' othei ?f h:5 kind, and taking no pride i lis product because it could bear n narks of individual impress. Th loatin.tr population in the mill village .vas large, and generally the worker vere :i bit restive; certainly not er husiastic. The spirit of life in thei vas not beins: satisfied Th i * nan wno rose earn ior a greas m4akf?:St, then worked and came fo i greasy dinner, going buck to his to mtil a fried supper was ready, coul scarcely be expected to view politic jr life with a sweet, philosophic caln i?im? "RIosxp s? Tlllmnrnt ?f old. hut repudiated by Tillman ai er Blease's first term a? governoi md described by the sententious ol enator a-? the 'illegitimate politic; ion of Tillmanism.' But Tillma 'ollowers were for Blease. as the lad not yet seen the promised lane Je came with no constructive pre :ram for deliverance. He had n ar-reaching plan for effecting a re rrangement of life. He squarely op iosed compulsory education and com ulscry medical inspection of schoc hildren. He was no believer i umntuary laws. But the enthusiasr le aroused was tremendous. H poke for the poor man. That wa t! He was the mouthpiece for th oor man's discontent. He articu ated the poor man's unexpresse motions, ambitions and disgruntle lents; did it garishly, did it senti nentally, did it courageously. H ?d. and gained his leadership be ause he did it. "Blease was first elected governo n 1JH0. and was reelected in 1912 'cHowing the two administrations o ?!ea?e as governor, there was a spir :ed reaction. In 1914, before th< nd of his second term, he had rui or United State? senate but had beei efeated. His successor at the stat ouse was Richard I. Manning, ; lember of an old and aristocrats amily. He was tne cnoice ox trr onservative interests which reckoner n a. pro-commercial administration n 191G, Bleaso, again the turbulen actor in politics, ran a third timi or governor, this time against Man ing who was offering for reelelction 'he anti-Blease forces 'fought th< evil with fire,' as the saying goes 'hey won, Blease being defeated b; bare 5,000 votes." A tribute is paid by the writer t< fovernor Manning in the statemen s made in passing that "his effort ;ere more in behalf of mankind thai f business.'' "In 1918 Blease ran again for th< nited States senate, entering th ace against Senator Tillman and on r twq other candidates. Senato 'illman died after the entry list losed and before the primary. Hi loft RIpqsp rmnrss^H hv hut on =5==5=55===S========S5S I elf, Lize .axies. tr i3. r5 lpany : t t j JL/ JL/ f f s man who could be counted upon as ii strong enough to make a real fight, o Elease was defeated, however, by a 0 decisive majority. War psychology >s was powerful; ho was anti-Wilson if s not anti-war; and the regimented bind was too much for him. n ''Blease conies forward again now e with the stage a!! set for him to play v the role of frenzied friend of the >r poor man. He conies when times are il far from good; when men. having tasd ted and felt of luxury in the boom s years of the war, are bitter because 1. this new standard of living so sume marily collapsed along with cotton p net* 5s vvjitii \\itr jj.> vcucuiui; \ i r, given way to disappointment over d npn-realization of war ideals, when il the pest of the cotton fields is thrivn injr in South Carolina as never be-, y fore. When, as one observer has rei. marked, 'Every dam boll weevil has >- in his shoot the making of a vote for o Coley j , i " I "Blease will surely flg'nt hard for | retrenchment. *He wili again voice "sentiments that arc in ino breasts of ^ ( obscure men. He will capitalize the 11 irritations, touch on tno sore spots, n plav on the complexes, and laugh at 0 the futility of the cotton schemes that 5 have been advanced. He is a devile may-care talker, and his observations, "; are acute. d I ; I "In the last campaign Blease was | tainted, his opponents say, with Re: publicanism?a terrible thing to say; | of a man in South Carolina! He op-J j posed the League of Nations. He j eschewed the works of Wilson. Pos-; r j sibly this will be used against him.j I but the elements in his favor togeth-1 ^ er with his magnetic personality, will enable him to throw a scare into the j e, camp of his enemies. Unless ho is ! keenly foiled, he will have his opnon-j 11 j ents on the defensive while the con0 I test is still young. True, his old par- j 11 doning record will be brought up j C I A?ain -fny Vio lnnco nrvrnvi- I j Ci^ci I I i , J.VI i I kUlllVU iwv^v ^ - , e j mately fifteen hundred convicts. This ;[ ? ? I ^ e I r I 'HE new S e I 1 Four-Passen rl I is mounted on chassis with the j "e able 60 horse-i that made en thousands of o^ the most critical in history. Every item of i equipment and f suggests ultra st; comfort. The front seat is correct angle foi riding. An uphc rest divides the * In additic ers front built-in, t same key Iment in ti stick," a M0DE1 LIGHT-SIX 5-Pass., 112" W. B.,40H Chassis $ Ii uur.'ii$ Roadster (3-Pe.ss.)... 1 Coupe-Roadster (2-Pass.) 1 Sedan 1 P % I mammmnmammmmmBDsammammamaBKammmmmrnM II T H 1 S IS / however, was never a powerful count c ayain.it him. herausr, whlie .squander- il iny pardons with a lavish hand, he c broke ui) a nefarious convict system h in the state penitentiary, a reform li never freely admitted by his oppon- o eats. 1 "To judye by past campaigns, out a of a total vote of 110,000 to 1 .r>0,000 a JBlease generally has as the wiseacres v s.tv. some 35.000 in his vest pocket? h has them before he makes a speech. _ Td vote for him if I seen him *tc mn' f\ sheep,' said one follower, and his remark illustrates the inalienable at-, tachment of the 100 per cent Blease tl men. Set over against thij nucleus P is an equally large number, possibly ^ a larger number, of voters who would ' not vote for him. though he should a turn angel. The fight is for the float- s; ers between these two groups of i :>itter-enders The ooint in \ the political fight now is not the sue-, Calcium I Big lot expeci morning. Ah prices on mola Slimmer I I ^S* fill I SI tudebaker two individua ger Speedster provide the cc the Big-Six overstuffed arm same depend- The touri tm lower motor with t and thusiasts of partments> is e ,vners during 1 . " Decause me u buying period wheels are m0I front fender, .is complete These disc wh mished detail . , , . i j j- with cord tires yie and riding f . . . . , rurnisned withe TV 1 . __i_ Oj 1. tilted at the mis latest oiuut * comfortable reflects Studeba >lstered arm- year-old reputa tonneau into ing fine vehicles >n there is a handsome set of nickel-plated 1 and rear, a courtesy light on the driver's $ hief-proof transmission lock which is operated 1 that locks the ignition switch and tool con he left front door. Ask for the Studebaker " measure of the greater value that Studebaker LS AND PRICES?/, o. b. fact SPECIAL-SIX . P. 5-Pass.. /19" W. B., 50 H. P. 7-Pass. 875 Chassis $1200 Chassis 045 Touring 1475 Tourini 045 Roadster (2-Pass.)... 1425 c ari , Roadster (4-Pass.)... 1475 Jpeeds, 375 Coupe (4-Pass.) 2150 Coupe 750 Sedan 2350 Sedan. Cord Tires Standard Equipment McHARDY MOWER Distributor hone 300 Newberry, S. C. V STUDEBAKE ess or the defeat of Blease. The i:ntr to be grasped is the impelling ondition that invited him out frail is large law practice again into pub " 'itV Thouyh ho should lose, what f it if he polls nearly half the votes? 'nat will show, almost -conclusively s his election would show, that the verage man is demanding another ray out than conservative mediocrity as to offer. (OTICE OF FINAL SETTLEMENT I will make a final settlement of he estate of Frances Moore in the 'ro'oate Court for Newberry County, . C., on Saturday, the 22nd day of uly, 1922, at 10 o'clock in the foreoon and will immediately thereafter sk for my discharge as executor of aid estate. EBBIE T. MAYER, Executor. [ewcerry, S. C. June i4th, 1922. \rsenate :ed Saturday ;o get our sses. >ros. Co. j . t PEEDSTER I i 1 seats which >mfort of an tchair. nk at the rear, suitcase comasy of access, ,vo spare disc anted on each eels, complete and tubes, are >ut extra cost. ibaker creation iker's seventytion for build Dumpiide, a by the ipartYard o tiers ffi ories BIG-SIX I ,126"W.B.,60 H. P. I i $1500 ? 1785 ' * r> \ 1QQ5 :er \i-ra.ss.;.. ?w (4-Pass.) 2500 2700 he BIG-SIX PEEDSTER $1985 f. o> b. factory :r year||