enforcement of law and refused to pay the claims for their services; it was made public throughout the entire State that they were State detectives, and their usefulness was very much impaired-so much so that both have tendered their resignations and quit the service. Of course, when it became generally known that these two men were in this business the violators of the law were then on the watch for them. I thought then and think now that I was exceptionally fortunate in getting two such men to do this work. But the Comptroller General set his judgment up against mine, whose duty it was to exercise judgment in these matters, and in open, bold defiance of the law refused to pay the claims of these men, and refused to pay other claims for similar service, which claims should have been paid in his office. Why the Comptroller General should have taken such course I am at a loss to understand; for I certainly feel that it was his duty to help me enforce the law, instead of standing between the violators of the law and myself, when I was trying to do my duty. I say that I am at a loss to account for his courseI should have modified this by saying, except upon the theory that he has allowed the political differences between us to influence the discharge of his public duties, knowing that he had at his back a partisan Attorney General, who was my pronounced and bitter personal and political enemy (and who, by the way, the people of South Carolina have repudiated and retired to private life). Setting himself up as a constitutional lawyer, backed by the State's Attorney General, whose assistance also I should have had, the Comptroller General refused to pay these just claims incurred in the effort to enforce the law. Of course, I have been charged with and blamed for non-enforcement of the law. But I want you to understand the situation, so that you may know if the County Supervisors and Commissioners had paid my constables, and the Comptroller General had paid my detectives, I would have had matters in very much better shape.

These differences and clashes, gentlemen, have been very unpleasant to me, for I have tried to do my duty, and I regret that so much illegal sale of whiskey is being carried on throughout our State. am glad to say, however, that when I explained these matters to the people upon the rostrum they did not blame me, but endorsed me by re-electing me Governor, while some of those who have opposed me were defeated, and others would have been if good men had placed themselves in the race and given the people an opportunity

to retire to private life those who have stood between blind tigers and the enforcement of the law.

If you will pass a law giving me the right to appoint five men, scattered in different parts of the State, who shall receive the $5,000 now appropriated for enforcement of law, I can use these men by sending them wherever complaints are made and maintain a much more rigid enforcement of the law than we have today. However, I want to ask you, if you make any provision for the appointment of constables or State detectives, or if you provide any appropriation, as you have been doing, for payment of the expense incurred in enforcement of the law, that you insert a proviso making it clearly mandatory that the Comptroller General shall issue his warrant payable to such parties and upon such claims as the Governor shall approve, letting him understand that he has neither the right nor the discretion to turn down claims which are approved by me along this line, and thus annoy and hinder me, as he has done during the past twelve months.

CONCEALED WEAPON LAW.

I respectfully recommend that you repeal the law against carrying concealed weapons, or that you amend it by authorizing the Clerk of Court of each county to license persons making application to him, and upon payment of a fee of $5, to carry a pistol for such length of time as the said clerk may fix, not to exceed thirty days under any one license. My reason for this is that the present law is a farce. You know this; it is common knowledge. Negroes and some others habitually carry pistols, and then when they get into a difficulty they shoot down the law-abiding citizen, who is unarmed and not in position to take care of himself against the coward. It would be a good idea also, in my judgment, to require the Clerk of Court to publish the names of the licensees, and to increase the punishment for violation of the law, providing that a person convicted of carrying a concealed weapon without a license be imprisoned for twelve months at hard labor, without a fine, and applying the receipts from license fees to the special enforcement of this law, in addition to the regular machinery of the law which we now have. I further recommend that you make the same punishment of imprisonment without the alternative of a fine apply to those convicted of selling pistols. I believe, gentlemen, this will do much towards stopping the carrying of pistols so freely, and will possibly save the lives of some of our people. If you will watch your criminal Courts

you will see that most of the people who meet violent deaths are killed with these little cheap pistols that are carried continuously in the pockets of the crap shooter, the blind tiger and the loafer.

DETECTIVES.

I respectfully recommend that you pass an Act requiring every detective, or so-called detective, operating in this State, to register his name with the Secretary of State and require him to secure a license and to pay a license fee for carrying on his trade within the State; that you also require every detective bureau, or so-called detective bureau or agency, to register the name of each and every person who is working for it, and make each and every one of them pay a license, and make it a misdemeanor for any man to ply the trade of detective in the State without such license. We have people running around over this State acting as detectives, carrying pistols in their pockets, without commissions and without authority of law. It is not unusual for them to say they are hired by the intendant or mayor of some town and claim that that makes them detectives and gives them a license to violate the law in going around armed. Such licenses imposed as I have suggested would be a source of revenue to the State; would not do anybody any harm; would make these people realize that there is a law which, when they operate in this State, they must obey, and, I believe, would result in good.

EDITORS AND REPORTERS.

I respectfully recommend that you pass an Act making it a misdemeanor for any newspaper editor, reporter or correspondent to promulgate, make or publish false report of the speech of any person who is a candidate for any county, State or national office. I make this recommendation because it is getting to be a common occurrence for a newspaper reporter to follow a State campaign, or to attend a meeting somewhere, and make a false report of the speech of a candidate by reporting just enough of his remarks to give the false impression desired, or by omitting just enough to create the false impression; and then, when the candidate sends in a correction, giving the speech as it was, the editor sits in his sanctum and says that newspaper courtesy forbids him from publishing it because its publication may reflect upon a brother editor or brother reporter. If you will make it a misdemeanor, punishable by imprisonment without the alternative of a fine, for any reporter, editor or correspondent to treat a man in this manner, you will put a stop to

much of the attempted defilement of reputation and much of the vileness that is carried on through the newspapers in our South Carolina campaigns.

I further recommend that you pass an Act to the effect that when any newspaper publishes a statement in regard to any person that is injurious, that when that person sends to the paper a correction of said report, the editor or manager of the paper be required to publish said correction in the same column of the same page, and with as large headlines as the original article appeared wherein the person was misquoted or misrepresented.

Now, gentlemen, I believe no man has suffered more from newspaper attacks and newspaper unfairness than I have. I am proud to say I can suffer from this no longer. The people know that what they see in the newspapers about me they cannot believe until they see it over my own signature. My private life and my public acts have been so continuously falsified by the press of South Carolina, in such a malicious and cowardly manner, that the people of my State know such attacks are entitled to no credence whatever, and the people have proclaimed them cowardly and malicious falsehoods by re-electing me Governor in the face of the most fearful tirade of vituperation, falsehood and abuse ever heaped upon one man in one, or even in many, campaigns. I can no longer be affected by it, one way or the other; but others are to follow me, and are they to be made suffer as I have been made suffer? It may have been in the past, or it may be in the future, the fate of some of you to have a wilful and malicious misrepresentation of you or your remarks prominently displayed in a newspaper, and the correction, if published at all, placed under miniature headlines on an inside page where nobody will ever see it. Is that fair? Is it not a matter which ought to be remedied by law?

Gentlemen, you have the right and the power to apply the remedy in matters of this kind, and I urge you, earnestly, to do so.

ELECTION OF JUDGES BY THE PEOPLE.

I respectfully recommend that you submit to the people of this State such constitutional amendment or amendments as may be necessary to place the election of all our Judges-Supreme Court and Circuit-in the hands of the people.

No doubt this recommendation will be met with strong opposition from the politicians, but it is right, and whether you let it pass your body or not it will be made an issue in the politics and policy of this

State, and will prevail; therefore you might as well take for yourselves the honor and the credit of having given to the people the better system.

You will be met with the argument that this will never do; that the Legislature is better qualified to elect Judges than the people are. Who elected the Legislature? Who elected the President of the United States? Who elected the United States Senators from South Carolina, the Congressmen, the Governor, and all State and county officers? The people. Then why should not the people be allowed to elect their Judges? Do you contend that the Legislature is more competent to elect than the people are? During the last session of the Legislature many of you were in that class, "the people." Were you not as intelligent and as well qualified to vote for a Judge then as you are now? Does your election to the Legislature make you any more intelligent or any better qualified to exercise the high right of suffrage, or, more specifically, better qualified to vote for a certain lawyer to be a Judge? Certain gentlemen who were members of the Legislature at the last session are now resting in the shades of private life (and as to that fact, with regard to some of them, I have no regrets). They are now in the class, "the people." Do you presume for a moment they will admit they are not now as well qualified to cast a ballot for some lawyer for Judge as they were a year ago when they were members of your body? No, gentlemen; the Legislature is the people; you are of the people, and the fact that you are members of the Legislature makes you no more nor less qualified to vote for a Judge than if you were not members of the Legislature; and, therefore, the argument that the Legislature is the most competent to judge of the qualifications of the judiciary absolutely fails, and takes its place in the political subterfuges now so common in the politics of the nation. Oh! but we are told there would be political "log-rolling," political chicanery and scheming for Judgeships if Judges were chosen by the people. Well, gentlemen, if it can be any worse than it has been in the Legislature of your State for the past twenty years, then God save our Judgeships, and God save the people in Judgeship elections in South Carolina. Do you think that the opening in a hotel of headquarters, where whiskey and cigars are kept, for the use of members of the Legislature, can be made any worse if the Judges are elected by the people? Do you think that Judgeship headquarters, set up in an office or in a hotel, sending out a string of little cheap political lobbyists, running around among the members of the