The Independent

THE KU KLUX IS FOR MEEKINS

Knights of the Pillow Case In North Carolina Are Sore On Democracy

Will Col. Isaac M. Meekins, Republican candidate for governor of North Carolina get the Ku Klux Democratic vote in the November election? It looks that way. One hears much favorable comment on Col. Meekins' candidacy from the Kluckers. The Carolina Jeffersonian, a weekly newspaper devoted to Ku Kluxery and published at Raleigh, commenting upon Col. Meekins speech in Raleigh, says:—

"You may not have liked the speech of Colonel Ike Meekins the other night in the city auditorium, but you will have to say that he is some speaker and he said something. Here is a middle-aged man who lived far enough back to get mixed up in Russellism and Butlerism and escaped both; who was a member of a National party which thought to put the black man in possession of all the culture of the Anglo-Saxon by simple power of a vote, but who dodged that pitfall, too. No ordinary man is the silver singer of Republican songs of the shirt, the full dinner pail, and most of all the unchanging status quo. He did not get coerced into the position of trading white man's rule for black man's votes and half-rule, nor does he come before the public apologetic for having cast a vote against a purified and restricted suffrage. The colonel supported the constitutional amendment. Consequently his orator speaks himself through an unhampered, unembarrassed, unafraid record. Was Woodrow Wilson a great man? Mr. Meekins says so. Is Chairman John Dawson a gentleman or merely a Democratic ward heeler, vote stealer, and partisan liar? Mr. Meekins says Dawson is a gentleman, a patriot, and an enlightened leader. Come to think about it, that's a fine appeal. It leaves the hostile audience with an impression that the speaker is a considerable man to have learned so much about men of whom he has had opportunity to know so little.

"We know a few Republicans in North Carolina who do not make and do not try to make the kind of appeal that Mr. Meekins directed at a community that is overwhelmingly against him. They think the usual joke, the appeal to cupidity, and the ringing of demagogic devices are pleasing to the masses. Colonel Meekins set both parties a fine example in manner. He shows that it is easy to exalt his own party without debasing his opponents, and that he caters to an enlightened North Carolina by assuming its sense in the premises.

"Whether one be Democratic or Republican in his affiliations it cannot be gainsaid that the tone of North Carolina politics would be distinctly improved if the laws which he advocated could be enacted and the discussion of them were bottomed on his own regard for the public decencies. There is no doubt that the Kluckers are inclined to the Republican party this year, Coolidge being the one Presidential nominee who is making a silent bid for their vote. LaFollette first paid his respects to the Ku Klux in strong language; then John W. Davis, the Democratic nominee came along and out-LaFolletted LaFollette in telling the Kluckers they had no place in this Democratic land. But Cunning Cal, the dumb-bell at the White House hasn't opened his mouth and the only word about the Ku-Klux that has come from the Republican camp was from Cal and Marie Dawes who gave the Kluckers a playful spank on the rump and then picked them up and kissed them and cooed nice things into their ears. The Kluckers are sore on John W. Davis and ready to knife the party that made him its nominee. But the joke will be on the Kluckers if they vote for Meekins for governor, for Col. Meekins has about as much use for the Ku Klux as a Baptist has for a Rosary and has privately expressed his opinion about them in language that in vehemence eclipses anything LaFollette or Davis has said."