Jasper County Democrat, Volume 17, Number 89, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 February 1915 — SAYS JERRY DID WEAK SOCKS. [ARTICLE]

SAYS JERRY DID WEAK SOCKS.

Only They Came Off With His Boots Declares This Kansas Writer. 1 first saw Jerry Simpson at a political picnic. It was in Barber county, on the west bank of the Medicine river, nearly 30 years ago. lie was addressing a> handful of "nesters”—straggling and strugjiling sod house farmers—on the plutocratic oppressions of the day. lie expounded the doctrines of the l nion Labor party with groat earnestness. and vigor, having divested himself of coat, collar, necktie and vest. His very dark hair—he was about 44—had shown no recent acquaintance with comb pr brush. At that time the farmers of Barber county were suffering some annoyances and oppressions from tlhe cowmen who, in the spirit of self interest, were discouraging settlement for agricultural purposes. They put many questions to Jerry in regard to the matter and it was then I noticed that which 1 afterward found most prominent in his public career—a species of scorn for the local diseases of the' body politic. He lif 1(| that the smaller good was the enemy of the larger-good; that no permanent improvement of the condition of the “nester” of Barber county could be accomplished until a cure was found for the ills of the entire country—until plutocracy was utterly destroyed. ,

At heart he did not believe in an> remedy but that prescribed by Henry George in ‘/Progress and Poverty”— the single tax. He recommended union laborism and populism, and,

in later years, democracy, merely as emergency or first*aid remedies, but he never recommended them as a specific cure.

In his first campaign for'congress he used to stay over night at my house /n Wellington on his way home tier Medicine Lodge. He hau an easy, way of making himself “at home” wherever he was. In going to bed one night he jerked his boot off with such force that it flew across the room.

“There goes my boot, sock ana all,” he .said, with a hearty laugh. I made no examination of the boot, hut it was as certain as proof coula he that his foot was as naked as the day he was born. His remark, of course, was a happy allusion to the great distinction Victor Murdock, then a young reporter, had recently given him—that he didn’t wear socks, and on account of which he was dubbed the “sockless states man.” ■■

He told me privately and frankly that he appreciated my hospitalities, as he really couldn’t stand the expense, pf going to a hotel. When he and Chester I. Long had their famous joint debates in 189 G I was detailed to report them. My deliberate judgment now is that in all, except possibly two, of the deb; t-s Mr. Long clearly had the better of the argument, but popular feeling ran with Mr, Simpson and he was elected, as Mr. Long knew he would

Both of them were- residents of the same town—-. Medicine Lodge. Jerry belowed to the crowd in that town that sat on the curb, smoked cob pipes and whittled the board of grocery boxes. Long belonged to that small and semi-exclusive class that held county offices or places in the directory of the banks—those //ho got their linen laundered at Wichita. The rivalry of their respective castes was sharp, and they mtensified their rivalry in politics with it. They brought it out sharply in the Newton debate, for the same castes were lined up in that railroad town on that day. The bankers and the petty officers of the railway and the men they influenced came out to cheer for Long, and the farmers and their wives came out to root for Jerry. -Vr. Bong was so worn out after that 'debate and the terrible sarcasm of Simpson that when I saw him a lew minutes later he was in bed with a bright fellow on either side of it— Bruce Keenan, now of Oklahoma, and S. S, Asbaugh, of the Department of Justice at Washington—revealing to him the weak points in Simpson’s argument and showing him in what way he could attack them on the morrow. . When I came downstairs I found Jerry sitting on the curb whittling a stick as unconcernedly as "Ts he was not a principal—and most of the people thought a victor—in the big battle of the day. Jerry‘Mid not study the issues ol that time with any system or diligence. He glanced over the papers a little, and with his faculty for absorption got something out of them. He depended entirely upon the resources of his wonderful memory, bis fearful sarcasm and his ever ready story to exemplify the strength of hi,s own argument or the fallacy of that of his op^pnent. I was with him .once when he and Samuel Gompers, the great labor unionist leader of the country, had a dispute over something. It was the first and only time I saw him off his feet im controversy. He seemed to have lost his cunning entirely on that occasion, and I looked to see blows struck. Both men were as white with passion as the paper I am writing on.

Politically he was unmethodical While in congress he was a poor letter writer. He didn't send out his garden seed or his bulletins. Although he was himself a soldier he did very little for the veterans of his district—in the field of pensions. -Eldorado (Ivans.) Republican.