People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 May 1895 — From One Who Knows. [ARTICLE]

From One Who Knows.

&$&&& respondent of the Chicago Record, in which Governor Atkinson of Georgia was held up to public gaze as a man -of unequaled political purity, a sort of modern Cineinnatus who had come up from thd ranks of the people, and in opposition to the corrupt rings or iiis dominant party, had single handed unaided by professional politicians conducted his late gubernatorial campaign to a splendid and honorable triumph, the editor of the Pilot took *he pains to write to a friend who knows absolutely the facts and whose veracity is above suspicion. The article was enclosed for his inspection and the following is his strictly impartial and unprejudiced versions of Governor Atkinson and his lilly-white campaign. The editor would mention that he lived for two years in Douglas county, near Atlanta, and is familiar with Georgia political methods and the statements in this letter have all the old famil iar ear-marks. “The Atlanta correspondent of the Chicago Record gets up a mighty clean and pretty record out of a mass of about as corrupt matter as ever disgraced the human family. You know yourself, a little of the make up of the Court House rings of Georgia. Of course the names of men you know in Douglas couuty, for instance will occur to you; that element of Democracy that favors and flatters you to secure your vote, and why resort to the most villinous practices to that end, or, failing there in, to discredit and make you odious through like disre putable means. That element that through ostracism, persecution and abuse drove every man of Northern birth, who had settled there, from his home and blithed the honorable hopes and expectations of hundreds of the citizens of that town, because they could not control their votes. This element of Democracy are the Atkinson men of Georgia, and his nomination was secured through just exactly these disreputable methods, against the now thoroughly disgusted brother democrats, who while winking at these methods as practiced to defeat Populists or Republicans, are “too honest” to submit themselves as victims. Atkinson, instead of being as the Record correspondent says, “elected by an enormous majority,” it is an undoubted fact that his so called election was simply accomplished through manipulation of the ballots by these same Court House rings, the men of the state, who, according to Hox Smith, do the counting in the interest of democracy let the

people vote as they may. One instance to illustrate. You know Salt Springs district and the semiofficial-whiskey influence that dominates that district. Its possible legal vote is 171. The. polls close at 4 o’clock p. m. and usually the head of democracy, with a hot whiskey-democrati3-stew-wash-pot in the buggy, reaches the Court house first of all the precincts, proclaiming in hallelujah exhaltation the usual 400r50 democratic majority. But this time, by 4 o'clock, democracy had its hands, mouth and ears on both ends of the telephone. No news from Salt Springs. Midnight, returns from every precinct in the county received showing reasonable Populist majority in every one. All this time and no authentic news from Salt Springs. It comes; out of a possible total vote of 171 Mr. Atkinson gets 382 majority. This is but one out of hundreds of like instances that could be given. But we must be charitaole and attribute these causes of stealing the people’s rights to political “kleptomania,” just as we are charitable towards other cases of “kleptomania” in high quarters. C. P. Parker.”