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PAGE FOUR
someness, and atrocity of the Leo Frank
case, to arouse that morbid interest—that
veird fascination exerted by the crimes and
criminals that are abnormally hideous—to
influence the sensational Hearst, to enthuse
Mary Delaney Fisher, to capture the Doc
tors of Divinity, and to set 80.0,000,000 idiots
to signing petitions.
To the Hearst reporter, Slaton said:
Trial Judge Asked Action,
“I would reply that the only man who could
reasonably ask me to commute Frank’s sentence
was the trial judge; he did so, then he died. The
other courts decided only on technicalities.
“Evidence appeared after the trial which was
highly important, and yet this evidence could
not be introduced in the other courts.
“That evidence was at my command and I
made use of it.” *
What will be your disgust with Slaton,
-when I tell you . that Slaton's statement as
to Judge Roan is an absolute falsehood;
and that the new evidence which he claims
to have “used,” was carried to our Supreme
Court!
The alleged new evidence was so utterly
nothing, that the Supreme Court unani
mously refused to grant Frank a new hear
ing.
Will it always be impossible to get the
outsiders to understand how Slaton misrep
resents the case?
SLATON. AND ANOTHER CASE OF “CIRCUM
STANTIAL EVIDENCE” HANGS AN OLD
GEORGIAN OF 65 YEARS.
In September, 1914, there was an effort
to save the neck of an old Georgian, made
by some people who had little money and
no organization, and no subsidized daily pa
pers, and no Doctors C. B. Wilmer and
Jake White, and no Hearst-Ochs-Pulitzer-
Straus combine, and no champions among
the snobs who are SI atoll’s “best people.”
The old man was named ITnphrey, and he
was nothing but a tenant farmer —whose
wife had no doubt sewed, washed, and would
have kept a boarding house if she had been
able.
He was convicted on purely circumstan
tial evidence, of having killed his landlord.
He was sentenced to death: and there
were a few generous Georgians, in and
around Dalton, who took pity on the old
man—upon whom er motherless daughter of
thirteen years was dependent for a sup
port.
But Slaton felt no pity: he devoted no
anxious days and nights to the study of
that case: ho made no mysterious visits to
New York while that case was pending: and
he had nothing to say against circumstan
tial evidence, then.
His snobbish soul can see nothing to ap
peal to him in the case of a condemned man
who would not look nicely in the parlor of
a Peachtree palace, or in the elegant quar
ters of an Atlanta Locker Club.
Tn iho Umphrey case, there were no un
scrupulous lawyers so highly paid that they
forged a letter of a dead Judge, to use it
before a Governor who must have known it
was forged.
TT7m cared for the old tenant?
He had no money: he had few friends,
and these few had no more money than
himself.
Hang him! Hang him on circumstantial
evidence! Jiang him, and leave his little
girl to the cold mercies of the world—a
world in which she can do what Mary Pha
gan did, work where Mary worked, and fall
a victim to some rich employer's lusts, as
Marv did ’.
And they hanged him. nine months before
Slaton repealed the law of capital punish
men. abolished (he jury-system, obliterated
two Supreme Courts, and rode into Fame
on a pretended mistake of law (which was
never made), and a pretended letter of
THE JEFFERSONIAN
Judge Roan, which was an audacious fake.
And with his latest breath, old man
Umphey protested his innocence! •
When Slaton isn’t talking, Burns is; and
I therefore return to Burns. He said to
the Denver Times:
“And it made them angry when I offered $5,000
reward for the slightest evidence showing im
morality in all of Frank’s life. That offer still
stands and has never been sought—and still the
stories continue in Georgia that he is a pervert.
“I have never known a cleaner, more honest,
more God-fearing man than Leo Frank. Only his
abiding faith in his God has, according to my be
lief, kept him up through the ordeal he has ex
perienced. And that faith will be rewarded, for
he will be proven innocent.”
The $5,000 which the noble Burns men
tally offered for evidence of Frank's im
morality, seems to worry Burns: the ducats
are a burden to him: they fatigue him as
he totes them around: he grows warm and
indignant because no one will relieve him
of the load.
“The offer still stands!” "Where?
If he will place $5,000 in The Georgia
Railroad Bank, Augusta, Georgia, and will
authorize the cashier to give it to the
women who make affidavit to Frank's im
morality, I will undertake to have the affi
davits made.
Now put up your $5,000 — you lusty liar!
Daisy Hopkins is entitled to a finger in
that pie. and so is Rebecca Carson.
And if attempts to seduce white girls
militate against Burns’ clean, “God-fearing
man,” and create any presumption that, he
isn't much more moral and God-fearing
than Burns is, I can easily produce about a
dozen such white g*irls whom Frank vainly
sought to debauch.
Commenting on this record-breaking
Frank case, the Miami, Florida, Daily Me
tropolis says:
All the South Dishonored.
The better manhood of old Georgia must feel
sadly humiliated by the action of Georgia’s Gov
ernor in the Frank case; the commutation of
the Frank sentence is not to be taken as merely
the saving of a man from capital punishment
it means that the pressure ot dollars has been
strong enough to sway justice, strong enough
to undo a. verdict of twelve jurors, who were con
vinced beyond a doubt that Leo Frank was guilty
of that heinous crime!
Governor Slaton has yielded to outside pres
sure —either through weakness or through some
potent influence—and has cast a blot upon the
history of his State never to be effaced. He has
told the people of Georgia, by this action, that
riches will buy pardons; that the treatment of a
man with rich friends should be different from
that of a poor man! And from his action, crimes
will germinate; and men will become more help
less in their attempts to get justice in the courts.
Suppose that the negro Conley had been found
guilty of that vile crime; suppose that the negro
Conley had been surrounded with identically the
same doubts as have been trumped up for Frank;
suppose that the negro Conley should have been
found to be the same sort of degenerate as is the
fellow Frank—would Governor Slaton have com
muted his punishment yesterday? Isn’t it en
tirely probable that the negro Conley would have
been lynched before he had had a trial?
But Frank had thousands of dollars spent for
him; not by “friends”—we cannot believe that
Frank has real friends —but by members of his
race who abhor the thought of a Jew dying on
the gallows. This money was used by master
minds; it was used to buy up venal newspapers;
used to work up sentiment in distant States
where the hideous details of the crime and the
type of character of the murderer were never
told; used in numberless ways, and at last its
effect brought commutation from the Governor
of Georgia.
The transaction is one of the most disgraceful
that the South has ever known —THE GOVER
NOR OF GEORGIA HAS BETRAYED HIS PEO
PLE.
On the same line, the Baltimore Trade
Journal says:
*7
It means something to be the Governor of
Georgia! The Czar of Russia rules not more
despotically! What if a State trial court and
jury—that great American pillar of liberty—'
passed upon the guilt of Prank; that the Sts'*?
Appellate Court affirmed that finding; that tuS
State Supreme Court did likewise; or of wW
consequence, to the Governor of Georgia, was ti. r
individual opinions of the members of the Su
preme Court of the United States, anc later of
the unanimous ruling of this same Supreme
Court —that the original findings of the trial
court was correct! All these ca i be lightly
tossed into the waste basket when the Governor
of the State of Georgia elects to consider the evi
dence and pass judgment as he sees fit —as he
did in the Frank case. We do not care a rap
about Frank, one way or the other; but we are
interested in what has become of our courts, our
boasted bulwarks of liberty; particularly of our
United States Supreme Court, whose findings
this Governor does not consider worthy of con
sideration. What is the use of courts, q.nd all
their attendant expenses, if the Governor of a
State can disregard the findings of even the high
est court in our land, review the evidence on his
own account and pass sentence as he pleases?
What are we coming to?
So you will notice that there are editors
outside of Georgia who have begun to
realize the foul miscarriage of justice, and
the cynical defiance of law, manifested in
the illegal favoritism shown to Frank.
What is to be the consequence of all this
Big Money campaign against the Law?
What are to be the results of setting up
one standard for the rich, and another for
the poor? How are we to adjust our rela
tions with the Jews, when the Jews de
fiantly tell us that such libertines as Leo
Frank shall not be punished for rapes and
murders of Gentile “factory girls?”
Gentlemen! It is time we were looking
the situation squarely in the face.
How much more of this sort of* thing do
we intend to put up with?
The “factory girl,’’ as the rich Jews and
the rich Peachtree people contemptuously
call her, is turning to dust in her grave—■
her blood yet crying vainly to high heaven
for vengeance —and the lecherous Simian
who marked her for his enjoyment, pur
sued her like a wolf after its prey, as
saulted her and choked her to death, -dis
ports himself lightly at the State Farm, in
his new blue serge suit, his patent leather
shoes, his insolent arrogance of successful
dandyism.
How much more of it can we stand?
How much MORE will the rich Jews
RUB IT IN ON US?
When we read how the law of Spain
forbids the Jews to live in that country;
and when we learn how intensely they
are hated in other parts of Europe, we are
puzzled to account for it.
Our sympathies have gone out to the
Polish Jews, the Russian Jews, the Jews
from Austria, and the Jews from France.
Our doors of Immigration have stood wide
open, and hordes of Israelites have poured
in upon us, from all parts of the world.
The Chosen People have prospered in
North America, as they never have pros
pered anywhere else: and if, now and then,
a Seigel goes to jail for stealing two million
dollars from the depositors in his bank, his
term ts only eight months.
If he had been a Gentile, and had stolen
ten cents, or a bottle of milk, he might have
got a sentence of eight years.
Twenty years ago, the rich Jews of At
lanta, Macon, Augusta, Savannah, and
Athens wouldn't have been insolent enough
to conduct against their Gentile fellow
citizens the coarse campaign of falsehood
and detraction which they have kept up for
two years.
Twenty years ago, the millionaire editors
and bankers, of the Ochs, Pulitzer, and
Straus type, would not mave arrogated to
themselves the privilege of re-trying and
liberating a Jewish criminal whose guilt
had been judicially ascertained.
Twenty years ago, a decision of our Su
preme Court would have settled the Frank
case.
