Newspaper Page Text
PAGE EIGHT
What Edmund Burke Said Could
Not Be Done, Has Been Done
in Behalf of Leo Frank.
(continued from page one.)
(World, Frank was convicted solely on the
evidence of Conley. You cannot learn, from
the Y orld’s history of the case, that anyone
excepting the negro, testified against "Leo
Frank.
therefore, this great Democratic, metro
politan newspaper, which is supported largely
by Southern patronage, lends* its mighty in
fluence to the outrageous falsehood, that we
condemned a white man to die, upon the evi
dence of one negro, who, by his own state
ment. was more or less of an accomplice.
Os course, every lawyer knows that such a
thing cannot be done, and that it never has
been done, and probably never will be done.
But the World uses those mis-statements in
its circulation among hundreds of thousands
of good men and women, who are not lawvers,
and who therefore, cannot know what a
shameful slander that is, upon our courts and
our people.
That idea, of the case has gone abroad, and
as error can outrun truth, the truth probably
will never overtake the falsehood.
As an example. I find in the “Rural
Weekly,’' of St. Paul, Minnesota, an article
by Herbert Quick, occupying the editorial
page, in which Mr. Quick positively asserts
“an eloquent prosecuting attorney got him
.(Frank,) convicted on the evidence of a
criminal negro, who lied over and over again.”
Mr. Quick further states that Frank was
“railroaded to conviction.’’ and Mr. Quick
says that he cannot conceive that “a decent
man in the Governor's chair, given the power
to do away with such iniquities, will let him
die.”
The publisher of the Rural Weekly is L. B.
Ashbaugh, and he claims for his paper a
circulation of 287,090. Assuming that five
people read each copy of the Rural Weekly,
1,400,000 Northern people will read that rank
falsehood, and will never read anything which
will open their eyes to the real truth.
In the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (which I
believe is a Pulitzer paper) there are two
recent letters by Wm. Preston Hill, M. D. Ph.
D. in which the State of Georgia is violently
arraigned.
Wm. Preston Hill. M. D. Ph. D. starts out
by stating that “anybody who has carefully
read the proceedings in the murder trial of
Leo Frank must be convinced . . . the whole
trial was a disgraceful display of prejudice
and fanatical unfairness. . . . This whole
proceeding is a disgrace to the State
of Georgia, and will bring on her the just
contempt of the whole civilized world.
Everywhere thoughtful men will judge
Georgia to be filled with semi-barbarous
fanatical people of low mentality, and strong,
ill-controlled passions, a race to lie avoided
by anybody who cares for liberty, order or
justice”
Then to show what a thoughtful man is
Wm. Preston Hill, M. D. Ph. D. and how
carefully he has read the record in the case,
he proceeds to state that “Frank was con
victed on the unsupported evidence of a dis
solute negro of had character” who was con
tradicted in 22 different instances!
Then Wm. Preston Hill, M. D. Ph. D. gives
himself away by advising people to study the
case—how ?
By an examination of the record that went
up to the Supreme Court?
Oh no! Study it by the paid columns of
that shallow hack writer, C. P. Connolly, who
got his ideas of the case from the rascally
and mendacious detective, William J. Burns.
Connolly has never studied the record, and
if Dr. Hill should do so, he would be sorry
for the intemperate and wholly erroneous
letters he has written for the Post-Dispatch.,
i HE JEFFERSONIAN
In the Chicago Sunday Tribune of De
cember 27, 1914, appears a full page article
beginning, “Will the State of Georgia send
an innocent man to the gallows?”
The writer of the article is Burton Rascoe.
The entire article proceeds upon the idea that
poor little Mary Phagan was a lewd girl;
that she had been immorally intimate with
two employees of the factory; that Jim Con
ley, drunk and hard-up, wanted her pay
envelope; that he seized her, to rob her,
and that he heard some one calling him, and
he killed her.
Mr. Rascoe says that, ordinarily, juries are
instructed that they are to assume the de
fendant is innocent, until he is proven guilty,
but that in Frank’s case, it was just the op
posite.
Mr. Rascoe says that, during the trial, men
stood up in the audience and shouted to the
jury: “Noud’d better hang the Jew. If you
don't, we’ll hang him, and get you too.”
The Chicago Tribune claims to be “the
world’s greatest newspaper,” with a circula
tion of 500,000 for the Sunday edition.
It is therefore reasonable to suppose that at
least two million people will get their ideas
of the case from this special article, in which
the public is told that Judge Roan allowed
the audience to intimidate the jury by shout
ing their threats, to the jury, while the trial
was in progress.
Os course, any one who will stop and think
a moment, will realize what an arrant false
hood that is.
Had any such thing occurred, the able,
watchful, indefatigable lawyers who have
been fighting nearly two years to save Frank’s
life, would have immediately moved a mis
trial, and got it.
No such incident ever has occurred, in a
Georgia court-room.
In the very nature of the case, had it oc
curred during the trial of Frank. Judge Roan
would have granted the motion for new trial,
for the simple reason that he couldn’t help
himself.
As illustrating the misrepresentations
which are misleading so many good people,
take this extract from the article in the
Chicago Tribune:
It has been declared by Burns, among others,
that the circumstantial evidence warranting the
retention of Conley as the suspected slayer was
dropped and Conley was led to shoulder the
blame upon Frank in somewhat the following
manner:
“What do you know about this murder?”
“Nothing.”
“Who do you think did it?” ■ ■=
“I don’t know.” , <
“How about Frank?”
“Yes. I confess. He’s the one who did it.” .
“Sure he was. That’s the fellow we want.”
And forthwith Frank was locked up as a sus
pect.
In fact, the greater part of Mr. Rascoe’s
article, like those of the hack-writer, C. P.
Connolly, are re-hashes from Wm. J. Burns.
Does not the Chicago Tribune know that
Burns was expelled from the National Asso
ciation of Police Chiefs, last year?
Does not the Tribune know that Burns’ con
fidential man in this Frank case, was expelled
from the Chicago police force, for black
mailing a woman of the town?
Does not the Tribune know that Burns and
Lehon bribed Ragsdale and Barber, the
preacher and the deacon, to swear this crime
onto the negro, Jim Conley?
Does not the Tribune know that Wm. J.
Burns is practically a fugitive from justice,
and dares not come back to Georgia, to stand
a criminal prosecution, for his corrupt meth
ods, in this Frank case?
Does not the Tribune know that the offi
cial records in the U. S. Department of Jus
tice disclose the fact that Attorney General
Wickersham, and President Taft set aside
some convictions in the Qregon land casesj
upon the overwhelming evidence that Burns
was a crook, who corruptly obtained those
convictions ?
As already stated in this paper, and in
Watson’s Magazine, Conley’s evidence is not
at all necessary to the conviction of Frank.
Eliminate the negro entirely, and you have
.a dead case against this lewd young man,
who had been pursuing the girl for nearly
two months, and who, after setting a trap for
her, on Memorial Day, 1913, had to use such
violence to overcome her struggle for her
virtue, that he killed her; and then had the
diabolical cruelty to attack her character,
after she was dead, and to say she had been
too intimate with men in the factory.
The following white witnesses testified to
Leo Frank’s bad character for lasciviousness
at the factory: Miss Marie Karst, Mrs. C. D.
Donegan, Miss Myrtie Cato, Miss Nellie Pet
ty, Miss Maggie Griffin, Mrs. S. L. Winkle.
Frank’s la'wyers did not dare cross-examine
those white ladies and girls.
"Why ?
Because that would have opened up the
way for the Solicitor to inquire as to the facts
and details which caused them to swear that
Frank was a libertine.
Miss Dewey Howell was brought from the
Home of the Good Shepherd, Cincinnati, and
she testified that while she was working in
the pencil factory, February and March, 1913,
she saw Frank with his hands on the should
ers of Mary Phagan, and talking to her.
A little white boy, who was not impeached,
swore he had seen Frank try to force his talk
on Mary Phagan, and had seen her trying to
rebuff him.
Miss Irene Jackson, one of the defendant’s
own witnesses, had to say on cross-examina
tion, that Frank’s character for lewdness was
bad, and that the girls around the factory
were afraid of him.
Miss Nellie Wood was offered by the State
to prove that, on the second day after she
went to work at the factory, Frank ap
proached her, and made an indecent pro
posal to her.
Frank’s lawyers objected to the testimony,
and Judge Roan ruled it out.
. . I lank, in his statement to the
.i nr y, took the position that he did not know
Mary Phagan, and in all of these newspapers,
magazine articles, &c., that are being strewn
broadcast over the country, Frank is being
represented as a clean young man of good
character and morals.
In Chicago, Mr. Lester Bauer has taken
command of the forces working for Frank.
They are to hold mass-meetings, denounce the
people of Georgia, pass resolutions, and take
this case out of our control. It is a high
handed effort of the North to dictate to the
South.
In Lowell, Massachusetts, Mr. John A.
Stevens is in command of the forces working
for Frank. Mr .Stevens is at the head of
great Northern firm of manufacturers, and a
member of the National Association of Cot
ton Manufacturers. In his line of business,
he comes in contact with Southern mill men
of various kinds, and of course has. influence
with them.
Mr. Stevens is mailing out “chain letters,”
that is, letters requesting each of his corres
pondents to write similar letters to five of his
friends, each of whom is to be asked to write
to five more. Mr. Stevens says, “This is a
chain letter: do not break the chain.” The
copy which I hold, was written to a gentle
man connected with the West Point, Georgia,
Manufacturing Company. Similar letters are
being sent all over the State, for the purpose
of working up a pressure on Gov. Slaton “to
bestow executive clemency in form of a par
don, or commutaton of sentence.”
Mr. Stevens encloses five blank letters
which the West Point gentleman was re
quested to sign and mail to his five friends, j
