Ferguson: Polling place, 1944 model
By Mrs. Walter Ferguson
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Stokes: A symbol passes
By Thomas L. Stokes
Washington –
In the passing of Senator “Cotton Ed” Smith of South Carolina was the passing of a tradition.
That is, symbolically, for the Smith tradition still lives here and there in the South.
It is the tradition of the rampant individualist, the rebel against too much government. “Cotton Ed” was that except occasionally as in the case of cotton. He was the champion, in his younger career of the sharecropper and tenant farmer, the way to political power, but in his later years he scorned help for such low-income groups from a paternalistic government.
It was not so many years ago, during a New Deal fight, that he dropped a remark about 50 cents a day being enough wages in South Carolina.
Demagogue type
In him was the development into almost the epitome of a type of demagoguery seen most often in the South, though not peculiar to it. This is the demagogue for the predominant economic and financial interests, who is able to sell his doctrine to enough of the masses by a picturesque personality, a gift for the homely simile and story, and with a slug here and there of prejudice, usually at the expense of the “Yankee” or the “Nigger.” The last was laid on more heavily if he was pressed hard politically.
There were few figures so engaging to watch in action as the belligerent “Cotton Ed” with his mustaches bristling.
There was a counterpart for some years in Georgia’s Gene Talmadge of the red galluses, who was taken care of by the people a couple of years ago, though it is too much to predict or hope that he won’t come back.
“Cotton Ed” was finally toppled from his throne in South Carolina in the primaries this year, after 35 years in the Senate. The people of a newer generation finally caught up with him. It must have been a great disappointment – his defeat – for a man so long in harness. But he was full of years. He celebrated his 80th birthday Aug. 1.
Middle class family
He died in the old house where he was born at Lynchburg, in the South Carolina midlands, where the Smith family had lived for over 150 years. He came from the substantial yeomanry of the upcountry, the backbone of the South, though less advertised than the aristocratic icing, with its legends of big white houses and honeysuckle, its mint juleps and pickaninnies, racing about to do “Old Marster’s” bidding, or the masses at the other end, satirized in Jeeter Lester and his breed.
Ellison D., who was “Cotton Ed,” was born a few days after Gen. Sherman burned Atlanta. He was a child in the stormy Reconstruction days and grew up with the memory of Wade Hampton and his “Red Shirts” who took over the state government from the Carpetbaggers. Wade Hampton was one of “Cotton Ed’s” heroes. The Senator donned a red shirt in the celebration after his victory in 1938 when President Roosevelt tried to “purge” him. He was jubilant that night.
Characteristic of the Senator, and the meaning of his kind in the South, was a scene that took place in front of his home described to me a couple of years ago by a traveling companion on a train rolling across Georgia.
My companion, who happened to be in the neighborhood of the Smith home on business, was taken by a friend to meet the Senator. They found him in the front yard, in his shirt sleeves, a pine branch in his hand which he was lazily swinging back and forth across his shoulders to keep off the mosquitoes.
The visitor asked him where the mosquitoes came from. The Senator pointed across the road where he said there was a swamp. He was asked why he didn’t drain the swamp.
“Oh, it’s been there since my grandfather’s time, and it might as well stay,” the Senator replied.
There’s “Cotton Ed” and there was the South which he represented. Fortunately, that’s passing.
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Perkins: Senator Pepper bends ear again to plight of underpaid
Florida legislator holds hearings but little result expected after ‘white collar’ series
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
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Army major missing 8 months; auto, personal belongings found
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Groton School founder dies
Dr. Endicott Peabody succumbs in auto
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Army releases mail from Philippines
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United States trains foreign air legion
Lend-Lease fliers receive training
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Coal company, merchandising stocks rise
Other issues show little change
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Banker urges reveal of credit regulation
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Well… if this is the pacific front… I am pretty sure that the japs ate him.
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Nope, he was last seen in North Carolina.
Well… good. At least we can hope he is alive.
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Are the ‘foreign air legion’ chinese?
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Ooh… then give the link. It might provide more info for the research thing which is definitely coming (not this year though).
It is one hundred percent,the LEFTS (Lahore elementary flying training school).
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