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Show I Senator Benjamin F. Tillman 1 1 What Salt Lake Papers Said After His Lec- l ture There on Sunday, May 26, 1907. M,K When Senator Tillman was in R Salt Lake City last liny, he was Jj interviewed in reference to poli- Hfj tical questions. Incidentally, he Hp was questioned as to eastern inen- Kf tion of himself as a candidate for B'rj - the Presidency. He said: HlC'i "Me for President? There ain't JD1 any chance of that I never had Hjj the-idea in my head and I'm nev- V ' cr going to put it there. No, sah, Bt ' I ain't a politician. There's too HI much invective about' mo. I'm Hii too ultra. Folks say I'm radical, HO but I ain't unless believing n H I wlhite man is .better than a nigger HJk is radicalism. Dj He Likes La Follette. W "But the North oughtn't to ob- Ht ject to a Southerner for Prcsi- Hr dent. There's mightly little sec- Hl tional feeling nowadays. Qod Hi knows I-vo given the North plcn- H ty of chance to show it if it has Hg any . Northern people aro cour- H teous to me and often they seem K to agree with me. Hj "I'd like to see La Follette HT; President, if lie is a Republican. R I believe he's' fair and square, H clean through. But he doesn't R stand any chance in his party, not Bj yet awhile, anyway. The corpora- K tion and machine influence is too K strong. There are millions of Hj honest Republicans, but they'll tt- have to quit being so miserably R narrow and hidebound and join K with us Democrats before wo can K accomplish much. When times H get hard again I believe millions H of 'em will quit. B" "The change is in sight already B Pcojile arc growing more hide- B' pendent every day. The election Hp, of a Republican Governor in H Ohio, the re-election of Johnson Hi in Minuor&ota and the election of Ha Burke in South' Dakota all show Hl, that. Folks are getting restless. K' "Oh, we'll win 'some day. You H know I'm always buoyant. I H don't know when I'm licked. I Ht always come up smiljng for the Hri next round. Maybo wo '11 win R next year. If the Republicans h put up-a man who's too tainted H& by corporation influence and we Hf put up a square man we can lick Ht the boots oil' 'cm. Hf "But it's too early to talk poli- Kj.. tics now. The parties aro like k two game chickens; did you ever H" sec two roosters pickin gravel? HI; That's the situation now." E Inter-Mouhtnin Republican, jK' May 28, 1007. H. "Several hundred Salt Lakers K now. know why Senator Benjam- Hr in It. Tillman of South Carolina, is i sometimes designated as "the H' flro eater" and commonly known Hv ,"'ijsUh( "mair-with tho. pitchfork,." These several hundreds arcthose who heard him speak on "The Race Problem" at the Salt Lake theatre Sunday night. Although the Southern senator's reputation had traveled before him and his audience was prepared for a spicy spi-cy line of argument given in n spicy way, Btr. Tillman proved a surprise in his barehanded treatment treat-ment of his subject. The plainness plain-ness of his statements and his bitter bit-ter denunciations of men and methods me-thods to which he is opposed will linger in the memory of 'his hearers hear-ers even when the import of his argument has been forgotten. "I have the unfortunate liabit of calling things by name," said Mr. Tillman. "It is the only luxury lux-ury I enjoy, and I wouldn't give it up for all the gold in the world." And before ho had spoken many minutes his listeners were thoroughly covinced that lie enjoys en-joys this luxury to a marked degree. de-gree. Many of his sentences were punctuated witih forceful expressions expres-sions but his earnestness in using them took out tho sting of the expressions and made them forgivable, for-givable, even to the women of the audience, of whom thcro were many. That Senator Tillman is sincere sin-cere in his views on the question of race, and that his convictions have been formed by a life in the hotbeds of the racial conflict, is not doubted by those who heard him Sunday night. And though many think him radical, perhaps unfair, it is doubtful if any will .say that ho does not know his subject well. He does not go to the pages of the historian for his matter, nor does he give his listeners lis-teners any second hand information. informa-tion. He speaks out of his own experiences of men wJiom he has known and events in which lie played a part." Salt Lako Truth, May 30, 1907. "Senator Tillman had a large nu-dienco nu-dienco at tho Salt Lako thcatro Suntlay evening when he lectured lectur-ed on tho race problem, that is, the problem of the Negro in the United States, what is to bo dono with him and what it his destiny. Mr. Tillman is an intcrcting talker, which was shown by the fact that from n little before nine o'clock until nearly midnight he held his audience, without any symptoms of wcariess on cither his sido or the sido of tho audi-enco audi-enco and from the beginning to the end his telling points brought nut applause, laughter and deep |