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The Grady County Progress. T, A.. T. MATOBS, ED1TOE. Leading Weekly Newspaper in Grady Co u nty Published Weekly, Every Friday, by THE PROGRESS PUBLISHING COMPANY. SUBSCRIpiToN RATES. One year $1.00 Six months GO Three months - 25 Entered as sicond-clasH mull matter July 22, 1010, at tlu* l’ost- otBee at Cairo, Gtt., tuuler tile act of Oongre.ss of March II, 1870. , ; Advertising Rates.—Do ponds on position, ntmdior of insertions and number of inches—will be given on application. Obituaries and cards of thanks will be charged for—5c a lino Not Responsible.—Tlie editor of The PitodlCKHu is not respon sible for the views of correspondents. Correspondents solic ited. “THE SECOND ‘PURF YELPS.” And now comes forth our daughty warrior, over across the way—The Cairo Messenger— with armor on and lance poised, with a challenge to battle. Life is too short to be in a continual wran gle—the people do not relish it. That is not what they pay their money for. By way of prelude, Major (?), we will state that we have never smelled powder, except that coming from an exploded fire-cracker, and “we are ‘awfully’ skeered.” Ah, my dear, brave and truthful patriarch, you say that we’ve lacked “nerve” to “contro vert” with you, when you have never offered to controvert, but instead have resorted to the tac tics of the “thug,” which you seem to be an adept in handling. You state that we “are a scatter gun.” We have found that when hunting “scatter ing game” that the best kind of gun to be used is a gun that scatters. We got the varmints “gwine and comin.” And in this instance we got two “purps” instead of 6ne. At least, two yelped. You deliberately, Without any- provocation, whatsoever, pervert the truth when you state that “we are determined to brook no opposi tion.” That statement, my valient warrior, is not in keeping with your other assertions. In plain English, you give yourself the lie. You say that we have no “nerve” to controvert; then you say that we “will not brook opposition and* permit no man to differ with, or criticize it.” For the sake of truth we defy you to quote one word from these columns sustaining your claim. We also defy you to produce one legitimate crit- cism from your own columns cast at this pa per. You mistake misrepresentation and accu sations as criticism. Not a single accusation have you brought that bears any resemblance of truth. We have, we admit, sat supinely down and let you frail us to your heart’s content, without hardly letting a moan escape, and we would not now utter a protest had you not. in over a col umn of your last issue, brought one false accu sation after another against us. Our space is too valuable to be “killed” by entering a con troversy with a man who has so far lost his self respect as to have no regard for the truth what soever—a man who wilfully places words in another’s mouth in order to administer a casti gation, as you have done. Our money is invested in this property. What talent we possess we have been trying to turn it to the benefit of the whole people of Grady county and not a faction or clique, and we intend to try and protect it from further misrepresentations. You have never had the manliness to dis cuss or criticize a single article appearing in The Progress, but have persistently misrepre sented what we did say or stated that which you knew to be untrue. You have accused us of taking bread from your mouth and those depending upon you. Not a word of truth in that statement. You have been your own greatest enemy. In order to freeze The Progress ov t you have resorted to the cut price racket. v Taking work at less than you had been doing it for before The Progress came into existence, and, too, in the face of the statement that you could not make a living from the prices paid you. We have maintained the rate for work you had established before our com ing, and in some instances we have increased that rate. And if you have gone tc bed hungry it has been your fault, not ours. You could have secured better prices if you had only de manded them. You stated that we censured the last grand jury for not finding a true bill against Chief Horton. You wilfully state a falsehood in this instance. Not a word, pro or con, did we pub lish. We stated a fact in a news item that an “attempt was mkde to indict Chief Horton for perjury by those whom he accused of gambling in J. Q. Smith’s law office.” We state again no opinion was expressed. Neither did we com mend the grand jury in its course for not finding a true bill. There were twenty-three “upright and intelligent men” who examined the witnesses and by not returning a true bill against the chief we presume they took into consideration the character of those making the charge. In the issue of the Messenger of February 10, when you learned that we were going to put on a contest, you jumped on us with both feet, stating virtually, that “the people re nembered the Whigham Journal’s fate and that the people could not be hoodooed again.” In that state ment of yours, you, sir, virtually stated that The Progress would act in the same manner as the Journal. You did this, not with any intention of benefiting the people, but in order to injure The Progress. You knew our contest to be le gitimate. Again, when you asserted that only whiskey papers conduct siich campaigns you knew that you were dodging the truth from the fact that The Georgian conducts such contests, also the Fitzgerald Enterprise, the Bainbridge Search Light, the Dallas New Era, the Madison Madisonian and Cuthbert Leader, all prohibition papers. The Thomasville Times-Enterprise and The, Prjess of t|e sajm ; €jcij|g hay|^ust N concluded such a contest.' * 'fy'* Now, sir, if you have any manliness about you name, in your publication, the stockholders who are disgusted with our course. Not one of them have ever entered an objection to us, and, so far as we personally know, have given sat isfaction. Name him or admit yourself a liar. We want to know and want the public to know him. • ■ You state further that the editor of this pa per is being used as a tool by a “special inter est” to traduce others, and that we assume the responsibility of it. Not a member of the com pany has taken advantage of his holdings to use these columns to condemn anyone, or commend any cause they espouse. We are not forced to apply to others for editorial help. For the benefit of the public we charge that you misstate facts, with malice aforethought, when you state that any member of this com pany has attempted to boycott you. Money has been paid to you within the month, by members of this company, which could have been legally paid to this paper, but in order to keep down a wrangle, or rjather abuse from you, they gave it to you. You, now, as well as in the past, have tried to prejudice the people against The Progress by twisting statements appearing in it. At the be ginning you tried to make it appear to the fol lowers of Joe Brown that this was a Hoke Smith organ on account of our publishing, for pay, ar ticles favorable to Hoke Smith’s candidacy, when you were guilty of identically the same thing that you charged against us. But you failed to accomplish your purpose then. When you compared the good Christian women of the town of Cairo to “bloody zealots” for passing around a petition to congress to pass a law to prevent the shipment of whiskey from a wet to a dry state, we did not seize this opportunity to try and prejudice the people against you. With charity for your short comings we overlooked it. But if The Progress had made such a break what a sweet morsel it woul J have been for you to have rolled around under your tongue! L. H. FOSTER. Last week L. H. Foster rushed into print in the Cairo Messenger to give The Progress a “larruping” for pub lishing a news story to the effect that Chief Horton “flushed a crowd accused of gambling in J. Q. Smith’s law office.” He did not wait to see whether The Progress would supply the two missing words, “accused of,” but in order to try and create a false impression, makes charges which he knows to be false. We have only pity for a person who has fallen so low in the scale of humanity as has the defender of J. Q. Smith, who needed no defense at his hands. L. H. Foster says he was entertaining a few gentlemen friends in the law office of J. Q. Smith. Those who know the character of L. H. Foster know that when he ads as host at a midnight party, in an out-of- the-way place, his guests generally foot the bills. Ac cording to the records in the office of the clerk of the su perior court of Grady county they generally, in these gath erings, can either be heard making use of such polite ex pressions as “come seven or eleven,” “fade me,” “my bones,” “you lose,” or “your ante," “come in, or have you cold feet,” “I raise you,” “I’ve got two pair,” “a drunkard over here,” etc, etc. In other words in a. “crap game or poker game.” It has only been a few short weeks since L. H. Foster and several of those he was entertaining in J. Q. Smith’s law office, plead guilty to gambling in the court house of Grady county, and it will also be remembered that it was this same L. H. Foster, who plead guilty before his honor, Judge Singletar)', and after the judge had dissmissed the jury for the term took advantage of the law and withdrew his plea to escape paying the fine for another three months. It is also a fact that before his fine was paid he came dan gerously near being locked up in Grady county’s jail for that fine. We regret that to defend ourselves from the unjust and uncalled for attack of L. H. Foster that we are forced to resort to the records in the court houre. We do so in order to let the public understand the animus behind the attack. T he gamblers have been permitted to hold full sway in this town without molestation—at least so far as publicity was concerned. They did not fear the courts, but d|o publicity, hence, they desire to deceive the public by abusing The Progress and crippling its influence with the law abiding people. The charge that we made the publication in order to injure J. Q. Smith is without foundation oh truth and could such construction be placed upon the news items only by a person who had sunk so low in depravity that he must try and pull some one down to his level. Below we re-pub- lish the item complained of as originally published: “An effort was made to indict Chief of Police Hor ton Monday on the charge of perjury by those who were recently tried for gambling, and who came clear. “It will be remembered that Mr. Horton last - No vember flushed, a crowd gambling in the law office of J. Q. Smith and acquisitions were sworn out before Judge Singletary of the City Court of Cairo and the ac cused were declared not guilty. “On the convening of the grand jury those accused of gambling by Mr. Horton made the attempt to indict Mr. Horton for perjury.” Is there an attack on any one in the above? We leave it to an unprejudiced public. Now for the facts, and which L. H. Foster admits in his card in The Messenger that “Chief Horton did make acquisitions of gambling against L. H. Foster and others.” He stated that they were in the law office of J. Q. Smith. We published only what Chief Horton swore to. L. H. Foster admits that he was entertaining a “party of friends” on that night in J. Q, Smith’s law office with out the knowledge of J. Q. Smith. T he record of L. H. Foster and friends is such as to create the suspicion that eating cheese and crackers and smoking cigars was not the only thing indulged in on that night. Only P Three More Weeks OF Piano Contest! GET BUSY