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PAGE EIGHT
Jeffersonian
Issued Every Thursday.
Office of Publication: THOMSON, GA.
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Entered at the Atlanta, Ga., Post Office, Jan. 11,
1907, as second-class mail matter.
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NOW.
THOMSON, GA., JANUARY 26, 1911.
What’s the Matter With Florida?
The selection of a Senator to represent a
sovereign people in the highest law-making
body on earth, is a matter of profound, far
reaching importance. The corporations are
well aware of this; and that is why such men
as Smoot, Guggenheim, Aldrich,' Gallinger,
Lodge, Martin of Virginia, Lorimer, Baiiey
and Root are in the Senate.
Martin and Root are the personal property
of Tobacco-Trust Ryan. Lorrimer belongs to
the Beef Trust, and sundry other similar and
such.
Bailey and Aldrich are legislative assets of
Standard Oil.
Guggenheim serves the Smelter Trust and
the Morgan syndicates. And so on, down the
line.
Whenever there is a vacancy in the Senate,
the corporations are on hand with one of
their tools, to fill it. They have so often
bought up legislatures—as was disgracefully
shown in the Lorrimer case—that a clamor
arose in favor of direct election of Senators
by the people.
In Florida, this demand for popular choice
of U. S. Senators, caused the legislature to
enact the law by virtue of which the matter
is referred to the people in a primary.
You will recollect that ex-Governor Brow
ard defeated Lumber-Trust Taliaferro, who
had shamelessly used his official position to
vote money out of the pockets of the people,
into his own.
Then Broward died, not long after his
great victory.
To decide who should fill Broward's place,
another primary was called: and, strange to
say, the contest did not excite much interest.
77/c electors would not turn out and vote.
This is almost incredible. And, it doesn't
speak well for the State. TO DEMAND A
PRIVILEGE, AND THEN REFUSE TO
EXERCISE IT, IS INCONSISTENT AND
UNPATRIOTIC.
The right to govern ourselves, through
representatives selected by our votes, is a
precious legacy which we inherit from an
cestors who fought and died to get it for us.
We are unworthy of those heroic fore
fathers, if we fail to measure up to the best
standards of civic conduct. It is our DUTY
to vote! It is to our interest to vote. It is
a calamity to the country, if by our failure to
vote for a GOOD representative, A BAD
ONE IS ELECTED.
To an outsider, it looks like Florida had the
same kind of evil luck that we had, here in
the Tenth Congressional district. There were
plenty of voters to defeat the undesirable can
didate, but they were divided.
Blount got only about one-fifth of the
qualified voters —some ten thousand —and his
opponent received nearly 14,000; but split, as
THE JEFFERSONIAN
these were, on Stockton and Bryan, the
minority candidate was ahead.
The race must now be run over. Stockton
made a gallant fight, got a highly creditable
vote; but he was the hindmost man and is
now eliminated.
It is to be hoped that every man who sup
ported him will now go to Bryan.
And it is devoutly to be prayed, that all of
those qualified voters who failed to do their
duty, in the first primary, WILL NOT BE
EQUALLY TO BLAME IN THE SEC
OND.
HERE'S HOPING BRYAN WINS!
It is a Publie Duty to Expose Such
A Dangerous Swindler and
Fraud as F. L. Seely
By sending out millions of sample copies,
as subscribers' copies, The Georgian Company
is defrauding the Government out of thous
ands of dollars. The rate of postage is so
much greater on samples than on subscription
copies, that the P. O. Department loses 3 cents
on every pound, when samples are sent as
Seely sends them. To swindle the Govern
ment out of its legal revenue, is to cheat the
people. It not only deprives the mail service
of needed income, but enormously increases
the work of the employees in the mail service;
and it is the cause of the deficit in the P. O
Department—which deficit in turn, cramps
the R. F. D. system, retarding its growth.
Thus, you see how many people will be
benefitted, if we make a complete exposure
and successful campaign against Seely’s
methods. Tens of thousands of people are in
terested in having such a persistent violator
of law convicted and punished.
Then, again, consider how many innocent
men, women and children have been swindled
out of hard-earned money, by his gambling
Prize-contests! On one of these, he raked in
$46,000; and even the prize-winners got next
to nothing. The scheme was not only a
gamble, but a most dishonest gamble.
Seely played one contestant against another,
jacking them up in great style, pretending to
tell them how many votes they lacked of being
ahead; until he had some of them wild with
excitement. The lady who won the house and
lot was spurred on so energetically that she
bought hundreds of thousands of votes more
than were necessary. In this way, the sanc
timonious sneak and hypocrite really sold his
house and lot at a good price—just as he
cleaned up a big profit on those South Geor
gia “farms,” and on those cameras and autos.
When a newspaper of general circulation
robs credulous people in that way, ought we
not endeavor to make it impossible for the
man in control to engineer similar confidence
games? Ought not the people to be warned
against a man of that criminal type, whose
power for harm is so great?
* * ❖
Again, there is a question of sustaining my
own reputation for accuracy and of rigid
adherence to truth—upon which depends my
future influence and usefulness.
Be patient with me and listen carefully to
what I'm going to tell you:
On the 7th day of Dec., 1910, a man regis
tered at the Terminal Hotel in Atlanta, sign
ing, in a bold, clear hand the name of
“F. 77. POND, AA’IF ORLEANS, LA."
Seeking and finding Mr. B. Bernard, this
man Pond exhibited a letter of introduction,
from an Association of Advertisers, of New
Orleans, in which Pond was accredited as
their authorized agent to examine into the cir
culation of THE GEORGIAN!
Pond stated to Bernard that he had been
instructed by his employers to investigate the
law-suit brought against Seely by Mr. Bern
ard; and also to interview Miss Ingram, who
drew the house and lot in The Georgian
Prize-contest.
Pond not only visited the lady, but ob-
tained an interview with her for Bernard and
his Attorney, Wm. M. Smith.
Pond related to Bernard and his lawyer
the same story about the Terre Haute land
swindle that he afterwards related to me,
and which was so providentially corroborated
by Mrs. Dr. Porter, of Paris, Tenn.
Pond told Bernard and his lawyer that
Seely treated him very nicely until the circu
lation books were asked for: then, Seely
balked—saying they were in use all the time,
and could not be spared.
Pond inquired of Bernard Seely’s middle
name. He wanted to know whether the “L.”
stood for “Loring;” Bernard informed him
that it did. Both he and Seely being Masons,
Bernard knew.
Now consider:
To give color to his falsehood, about fabri
cating what Pond told me, Seely, in his
editorial, stated that The Jeffersonian “will
be on sale, etc.”— pretending that he had not
seen the paper at the time he wrote the edi
torial.
By the midnight train, on Tuesday, we sent
2,000 copies to the Atlanta news-stands; and
the paper was on sale Wednesday morning.
Seely saw the Pond story, for the first time,
in our paper. It was easy for him to get in
touch with Pond, afterwards, and buy him
off. Apparently, that was what he did.
In his desperation, he attempted to foil the
blow, by pretending that he had practised a
hoax on me. You will remember that The
Georgian handled the matter Wednesday
afternoon.
Pond believed that every thing he told me
was true; and I have verified all the material
facts.
Without knowing that such a man as Pond
was living, Mrs. Dr. Porter confirmed the
story of the Indiana land-swindle. By the
bye, that fraud was no more rotten than THE
SWINDLE WHICH SEELY IS NOW
WORKING, at the expense of duped adver
tisers, and the negligent Federal authorities.
The first thing he knows, he will have to skip
out, again, or face a criminal prosecution.
That sanctimonious rascal called up Mrs.
Porter’s son-in-law, James Lanier, on the
long-distance telephone—on Saturday night,
after I had published Mrs. Porter’s statement.
Seely told Mr. Lanier that he was going to
bring suit against Mrs. Porter, and asked
Imnier to come to Atlanta the next morning,
and to 'phone Seely of his arrival.
What better evidence of guilt would you
want ?
I suppose, he thought he might bribe
Lanier, as he must have thought his man,
Pete Smith, could buy our man, John Pea
cock.
Crafty impostor! He ought to be run out
of respectable society, and irtto the peni
tentiary !
If Pond had come to me as the agent of
Seely, he would never have told me the de
tails of Seely’s dishonest prize-contest.
By his telling me that a man, on the inside,
bought up a large number of subscriptions,
which he afterwards disposed of along the
R. F. D. Routes, for whatever he could get,
I was enabled, to fix the fraud on
J. O. COCHRAN, THE RIGHT-HAND
MAN OF SEELY.
It was Cochran who intruded himself on
the audience at the Orpheum theatre, and
tried to start a disturbance. (We squelched
him in short order.) He was also the man
that Seely sent to Columbus to see that
woman, who told Joe Sid Turner how Gov
ernor Smith had taken advantage of her in
his Executive Office.
If Pond had come here, as the representa
tive of Seely, he would not have told me that
the manager of the contest cynically stated
that the prize would go to the contestant who
paid in the most money, and not (as the
public was assured) to the one who got the
greatest number of subscriptions. This ex-