countrymen, in this fair Republic that matches in its enormity a betrayal, and the man who will do it will commit any crime on the calendar if you will give him any way to do it. [Just as Bailey did.] Austin, Texas, January 2, (Dallas News, Jan. 3), 1907. * In behalf of his candidacy before the special Democratic primary of Travis County, January 5, 1907, Mr. Bailey said: "It is a most extraordinary condition, which calls a Senator from Texas away from his duties at the capitol of the Republic to answer to a series of charges which, if they were true, and if they had been admitted in the beginning, involved neither personal, political nor professional misconduct. [Why then did Mr. Bailey pay any attention to them?] I have learned [by experience we may suppose] that a lie upon the lip of a politician has more lives than a cat. But I am not only going to kill this one, I am going to bury it and I am going to bury it face down so that the harder it scratches to get out, the deeper it will go toward where it belongs. My enemies begin talking about me on January 1st and continue until December 31st. My countrymen, the more I mix with a certain class of politicians [indicted politicians perhaps, such as Pterce, Kirby, Moore and Hornsby] the better I like my horses. They never lie to me and they never lie about me. [Of course, "My dear Pierce" never lied to him and the Legislature of Texas was denied the privilege of ascertaining whether or not Pierce would lie for him under oath.] The real style of that suit [The State of Texas vs. Waters-Pierce Oil Company] ought to be the Attorney General and other disappointed politicians to oust the Hon. J. W. Bailey from his seat in the Senate. [Why then did the Travis County jury assess the oil trust $1,623,900, covering every day of its existence since Mr. Bailey brought them back to Texas six years ago?]" ** "They stole these notes of mine. They stole this voucher of mine, and they would have stolen that draft of mine if any such draft had been given. [His notes, vouchers and drafts had gotten in bad company. I will say that I never heard of a check for $1,500 or any other amount between Henry & Stribling and the Waters-Pierce Oil Company or between either of them and the Waters-Pierce Oil Company and that I have had no more to do with it than Charles Fred Tucker had to do with the salvation of immortal souls. [Mind you he was very careful not to say that he had never drawn a draft on H. C. Pierce for the $1,500 in question; was always careful to say that he did not draw a draft on the Waters-Pierce Oil Company, and thus is his veracity above question. There are two kinds of lies, a direct lie and an indirect one. The indirect lie is frequently a double lie]. * I said that if they would produce a note or a draft, an order or a paper, of any kind signed by me, endorsed by me or approved by me, I would resign my seat in the Senate and retire forever from public life. Isn't that broad enough? Do you know what these devils require of me? If they were to ask me if I went to church last Sunday and I would say no [note the equivocation that was evidently present in his mind about the draft he did in fact draw on Pierce as was afterwards accidentally shown], they would want me to stand up every other Sunday and say that I had gone to church every other Sunday since I was born. "Whose business is it when I borrow money as long as I keep my private and my public business separate and apart? [But that is the very question in issue as to whether or not he has done so]. Let these miserable dogs point to an instance of my public life wnere my private interest influenced my public duties, and I will discuss with them my private transactions from the cradle to this good hour. "They will have the right kind of an Attorney General in Texas [A Bailey-Standard Oil 'kind'] some of these days, and then instead of trying to blacken the name of Senators in this State, he will be trying to punish the greedy criminals that infest it." * * * * At Manor, Texas, January 3, (Dallas News, January 4,) 1907, Mr. Bailey addressed the citizens in his usual style. He said in part: For my watchful vigilance of the people's rights-these men are hounding me today in every county of this State. [The liars seem to have been well distributed.] I ought to be in the capital of the Republic at this hour; I ought to be in the Senate. [And so he would have been except he had listened to the money changers rather than to the heart-beats of the people.] Now and then you hear one of those miserable dogs-some people say I ought not to call them that; really, I do not think they are entitled to be called dogs, I think they ought to be called hounds-a hound is a little worse than an ordinary dog. I am not afraid to practice my profession. If this corporation had wanted my services, I would have accepted their fee, because I believed that to be a legitimate and independent and useful business enterprise. [But our Joe was so credulous. He would not believe the Standard Oil agreement itself to which the Waters-Pierce Oil Company was a party, through its stockholders, when Attorney Henry showed it to him in Waco and argued the case with him. He preferred the word of a trust master under indictment. The latter had loaned him $3,300 and promised him $1,750 more]. * I don't blame some of these lawyers for declaring that a man cannot serve the public faithfully because they know if they were in my place they would sell the Capitol of the Nation if they had a chance. [If they, then why not Bailey?] * I don't blame them so much as I pity them from the bottom of my heart, but here is the test: Don't judge me by the low standard which these men set up. I am willing for you to judge them by their own standard. * * * * * I am getting to the point where I don't think a man ought to be fined when he slaps a liar's face. This is one of the most peculiar political episodes in the history of the country. There never was before an attempt to make more political issues which would divide the State out of a small suggestion of a compromise in the courts of the country. Did you ever hear of it before? [No; no Texas Senator ever suggested a compromise of the State's honor, to say nothing of his own]. You never will hear of it again, because when I get through with these men that are trying to make this mischief, they will be buried so deep that the resurrection morn will not find them up. I am going to bury them, and I am going to bury them face down, so that the harder they try to scratch out the quicker they will get to where they are going. They catch every man they can and prejudice him against me and tell him a thousand lies. They are running me against the world and I might add the flesh and the devil. Why don't they say who they will ask the people to support against me? [Because that would have been disloyalty to the party until we had first shown the party nominee's unfitness from the standpoint not of party doctrine, but of honesty and integrity. When that was done, it would have been time enough to have talked of our candidates.] They dare not. In the first place, if they would stand their candidate up by my side he would not reach to my waist; that's a fact. When they come to comparing his public services to mine, he would shrivel to the proportion of a pigmy. [Poor Texas!]" Austin, Texas, January 4, (Dallas News, Jan. 5), 1907. Mr. Bailey closed the Travis County campaign by a speech in the skating rink, from which the following excerpts are taken: "I am ready again to affirm my right to practice law. Let us have no misunderstanding about it. I intend to continue to practice law as long as my inclination may lead me to do so. [But since Mr. Bailey's rise from admitted insolvency, when he was elected to the Senate in 1900, to opulence and wealth, there is no evidence that he ever appeared before any court in the land; his name seems to have appeared but to one pleading, that prepared by Ball & Andrews when he closed out the Southwestern Oil Company as a competitor of the WatersPierce Oil Company.] * "They had stolen the note to use against me and I was given a receipt when I paid the note. [Afterwards he admitted that he paid the $8,000 note by giving one for $24,000, and that the latter note was partially discharged by legal (?) services and as to the balance he refused to say. (See his testimony.) I will exhibit the receipt if they will acknowledge that they have lied about me. [No trouble for Pierce to write receipts.] It is a new doctrine that a man in public life cannot borrow money [from the trust masters (?)]. The miserable wretch who would borrow money to repudiate his instructions will not pay it back. My judgment is that the man who will repudiate his instructions, who will betray the people, is a criminal and will take a bribe. [Bailey ought to know.] I keep my private affairs separate from my public duty. [They have gotten woefully mixed in the public mind.] as much as if I were two different men. I never had a temptation to mix them. I practice law, but I don't mix it with politics. I defy my most malignant enemy to show that I ever received a fee [He practically admitted that he had re ceived loans or financial favors from every beneficiary of his legislative efforts involved in the whole series of charges] in any matter remotely referring to legislation." Wichita Falls, Texas, January 7, (Dallas News, Jan. 8), 1907. After being introduced by one of his idolators, as "the greatest man on earth," our Caesar asked: "Who do they want to take my place? Tell the people of Texas what dark horse you have hitched out here in the bushes. Is he a scrub or thorough bred? Is he a Norman, Spanish, Calico, black or bay? [He would not have been of the Standard Oil breed.] Austin, Texas, January 17 (Dallas News, Jan. 18), 1907. In addressing the Legislature after having privately examined the Waters-Pierce vouchers, letters and telegrams affecting him, Mr. Bailey said in part: "It is a little novel, however, for politicians to raise the question about the payment of debts. [He evidently means that as a politician, he has never been in the habit of paying his loans]. Ah, my countrymen, let me warn you of this, that there is not one of you against whom a serious charge cannot be preferred and supported with more evidence than they have produced against me -not one of you. [This seems an endorsement of Walpole's proposition, "That all men have their price."] They have raked the gutters from Galveston to New York; they have burglarized law offices; they have robbed the files of their employers and they have done their worst. [Wonder why?] "If any reputable man here or elsewhere has a charge to make, I am ready to answer it. I only ask the privilege of being permitted to look into the face of a man who is willing to swear that I have done any wrong personally or politically. [Why wouldn't he look into the face of A. A. Green of Dallas, who was present in the Committee room at the invitation of the proponent of the charges, anxious to testify, but was not allowed to do so? Why wouldn't he be cross-examined either by Crane, Cockrell or Cocke?] "Gentlemen of the House, I bid you good afternoon with this statement, that for four months I have been pursued with a rancor and bitterness never before exhibited against a public man in the State of Texas. If, with these four months of cruel and relentless war upon me, they are not prepared to make their proofs, then you are justified in concluding that it cannot be made. [The proof was offered. Enough was admitted to convict a man of felony a dozen times over if the charges had involved felony. Much of it was excluded, be it said to the shame of the suppressors of truth in the interest of political corruption in high places]. |