MainStreetNews - History - Part I
Chapter 4: The Herald vs. Populism
"The Jackson Herald is making some telling strokes for Democracy. The Herald is one of the best and most influential of Georgia weekly papers, and its service is of inestimable value at this critical period in the party's history."1
That is what the Athens Ledger had to say in 1892 about The Herald's fight against Populism. But before the battle ended in 1898, The Herald and the Democratic party in Jackson County had to take some telling strokes on the chin and twice come off the ropes to win.
Battle lines began shaping up as early as 1890, a year before John N. Holder became editor of The Herald. The Allaincemen, or Democrats if you prefer, were victorious in the state election that year. Liberal in their ideas, they passed many laws guaranteeing greater social justice.2
Nevertheless, this legislation was too conservative for many Alliancemen. There was the silk stocking faction, who held the position of power, and this displeased the wool hat element. The wool hatters came to believe that, in actuality, the Democrats had swallowed the Alliancemen rather than the other way around. Thus the desire for a third party, divorced from the Democrats.3
By 1892 there had arisen in national affairs, too, a party of discontent. Made up largely of farmers, it was called the People's party or the Populists. For these Georgia Alliancemen who wanted to get away from the Democrats, this was it.4
As early as August 7, 1891, Mr. Holder took cognizance of the Third party movement, and would have nothing to do with it. He wrote:
There are two great parties--Republicans and Democrats-- and a hybrid, the Third party. The Republican party is in favor of protecting the monopolist, the Democrats are in favor of the people, but the Third party--what can we say of it? Nothing, except that the people of Georgia don't want such a thing.5
Mr. Holder was to learn later that he was speaking for all the people of Georgia, particularly those in his own county.
It is true that most Alliancemen, or Democrats, refused to be led into a Third party. They held their convention and renominated Governor Northen. However, Populism made its appearance in '92, held its convention, and nominated W. L. Peek for governor.6
About a month before The Herald carried the "VICTORY!" headline and story proclaiming the election of President Cleveland, Mr. Holder happily could write that Northen had defeated Peek. Then he tried to discourage the Populists from further battle before they really had begun to fight. Said the editor following the governor's race:
We cannot see any plausibility or reason in keeping up the fight by the People's Party, when the fact is that Georgia is Democratic by seventy thousand majority. What is the use of causing bitterness and strife when the People's Party has no hope of accomplishing anything by so doing? We have had a fair test, and it is shown that the People's Party is in a hopeless minority.7
About a month after Cleveland was chosen president, Mr. Holder found himself getting in his final editorial barbs before the last election of a busy political year. This one was to be for county officers. "In our last issue," The Herald editor wrote on December 23, 1892, "we told the people who the Democrats had nominated to fill the county officers for the next two years."
He continued:
Now we are going to tell the people another thing, the Democrats of Jackson county must elect their candidates.
Every man who voted in that primary is honor bound to support the nominees.
The battle is on. Our lines are drawn up in battle array. Let every man on the side of Democracy prove a true soldier. We want to see every man stand to his gun, and in one more battle the fight will be won for all time to come. Democrats, we must elect our ticket by an overwhelming majority.8
As it turned out there were errors of judgment in the editorials of both before and after the presidential election. The People's Party was not in a hopeless minority, nor was the Democrats' fight for county offices to mean victory for all time to come.
But there was victory for the moment, and Mr. Holder could write on January 6, 1893, that "The Herald greets its readers this week in a good humor and with a broad smile. We wish every man, woman and child in the county good luck and prosperity during the year 1893."9
Editor Holder went on to explain why he was so elated. He pointed out that at one time Jackson seemed one of the strongest Third party counties in the state, and that apparently there was nothing to turn back the tide.
"But it has been turned," he wrote in the first issue of a new year. "The old Democratic party of the county is like a snow ball--the farther it goes the larger it gets....Every county officer for the next two years will be Democrats."10
There were other reasons for happiness at The Herald office. "We have a new press, on which this week's issue has been printed," wrote Mr. Holder in the paper of January 6.
Two weeks later, as the publication completed volume twelve and entered its thirteenth year, the editor again commented on the press. He said The Herald was printed on a Washington hand press for several years, but that it wasn't long before Editor Howard set this one aside and purchased a hand cylinder press. Until the first week of '93 the paper continued to be printed on this. The press Mr. Holder bought was a new steam power outfit, which he called "a great improvement on the old one...."11
The editor of eighteen months said he had made marked improvements in the office. "What money we have made, and we have made some," he asserted, "we have put it all back into the office in the shape of improvements in the mechanical department."12
Continuing, he said:
We have now one of the best equipped offices of any country weekly in Georgia....We can print from one thousand to fifteen hundred papers an hour. This enables us to do our work more quickly...and we would like to have more subscribers....We already have fifteen hundred subscribers, but a county with the population of Jackson ought to give their county paper at least two thousand subscribers.13
This goal had not been reached, however, on January 12, 1894, when the paper launched the first number of volume fourteen. "We would like to have two thousand subscribers by the beginning of next volume," Mr. Holder wrote in that issue.
He said, though, that The Herald had nothing to complain about, pointing out that circulation and advertising had increased, and that business was better in 1893 than it had ever been.
On September 29 of that year, under the heading "Pardonable Pride," Editor Holder said, "It is with great pleasure...that we announce...that we have the largest advertising patronage this fall we have ever had...during our connection with the paper."
In fact, advertising had increased to such an extent by October 27, 1893, that the issue of that date contained six pages. But evidently the advertising boom was in preparation for the Christmas trade, for by December 15, 1893, the paper was back to four pages.
While The Jackson Herald seems to have prospered fairly well in 1893, such was not the case for Georgia and the country as a whole. Following the election of President Cleveland, Governor Northen, and the Democratic slate of officers for Jackson County in 1892, economic conditions continued to grow steadily worse.14
Cotton came to sell for less than five cents a pound. Property values dropped from $421,000,000 in 1892 to $338,000,000 in 1893.15 Mr. Holder had much to say during the latter year about the sad financial state of affairs. In July of 1891 The Herald editor lay the blame for the money stringency on the oversupply of cotton. But come July, 1893, he wrote:
The present financial distress of the South had not been brought about, in our opinion, solely by political mismanagement or the planting of too much cotton and too little corn. These...have added fuel to the flame, but the main agent in bringing about this unfortunate state of affairs has been...the almost universal habit our people have fallen into of living beyond their means.16
In less than a month conditions had grown so bad that President Cleveland called Congress into extra session. Commenting on the president's message to the legislators, The Herald editor said, "He makes no effort to cover up or hide the present distressing state of our monetary affairs, but lays the entire matter bare and rightfully charges the responsibility for it all upon past vicious legislation."17
Whatever the causes, the situation turned many Georgians into Populists and made Tom Watson their leader.18
Mr. Holder had put out but one issue of The Herald before he was taking note of Watson and expressing concern over the McDuffie countian's political course. "Yes," wrote the editor on July 17, 1891, "Mr. Watson is going to be one of the most brilliant statesmen in the South--that is, as soon as his enthusiasm cools down to a tolerably safe temperature."19
In passing, it might be well to note that the first interruption in Mr. Holder's editorship occurred in 1893. On August 18, under the heading "Explanatory," was this note: "Editor Holder's affliction, in the death of his infant daughter, will account for the absence of all matter of a political nature this week." This was signed, "A. J. Bell, Acting Editor."20
Almost a year after the death of his child Mr. Holder again found himself with the editorial task of trying to elect a Democratic governor and Democratic county officers. In the issue of August 10, 1894, he announced the state Democratic ticket, and devoted three columns to the convention at which W. Y. Atkinson was nominated for governor.
Nearly two months later one could tell from the somber way The Herald announced the election of the state Democratic ticket that all had not gone well in the county. "The October election in Georgia has passed off and the full Democratic ticket is elected," Mr. Holder wrote simply.21
Getting around to the county, he said the vote was the largest ever polled in Jackson. Eight hundred and thirty-one persons cast their ballots. And the majority cast them in a direction that did not please Editor Holder. Said he, "...The face of the returns indicate a Populist majority of one hundred and sixty."22
But The Herald did not give up that easily. Mr. Holder wrote following the election:
Although the Populists denounced the use of money, whiskey and other corrupting means in elections, yet they violated every pledge they made not to use money, whiskey and other corrupting means....Men were voted in this county whose residences are in other counties, and men who have tax executions against them an inch thick cast their ballots for Populism.
After all the fraudulent votes are thrown out, and then, if the populists have a majority of the votes of Jackson county, no one is more ready to surrender to the will of the majority than ourselves.23
Surrender he did. There were not as many fraudulent votes as Editor Holder must have thought, for on January 4, 1895, he stated, "The candidates all went down in defeat, and Jackson county's officers are all Populists except Judge Bell, the Ordinary, whose election does not occur till two years hence."24
The best he could do in defense of his party a week later was to write, "The Democratic candidates in this county scared their Populist opponents terribly bad, if they didn't beat them."25
In yet another week, as The Herald began volume fifteen, there was evidence that Mr. Holder felt no bitterness toward his political adversaries. Commenting on the paper's anniversary, he said, "It begins a new year well, hearty, happy and with the best of feelings towards the world and having no malice toward its enemies."26
Of conditions in general, he had this to say:
The year just past has been an eventful one. Hard times...have been harder than ever. Cotton had brought a smaller price per pound than it has in several years, and of course this hurt the farmers, and it worked harm to the merchant, and, in fact, everybody else in this section, including the newspaper man. 27
Mr. Holder went on to say that The Jackson Herald had suffered along with all other enterprises. He added, though, that its subscription list was larger than it had ever been.
In the same issue there are indications that the paper also was receiving a record amount of cursing at this time. Here is the way the editor stated it:
We guess The Jackson Herald gets more genuine cursing and abuse than everything else in the county combined. Our opponents, the Populists, read it and abuse it. They read, pull their hair, swear they will give us a licking, or at least will give us a piece of their mind, the very next time they lay eyes on us. But, after reflection, our good friends reconsider, or at least we haven't toted many whippings or enjoyed many cussings. This reconsideration on the part of our friends is quite kind, and we thank them for it.28
Mr. Holder was not one to join those he could not lick, but there is some basis for believing that he tried to smooth out some of the rough spots between himself and the Populists. He admitted he had been as strong an opponent as the Third party ever had, but said he had been an open, honest fighter.
"We have spoken right out just what our ideas were concerning the Third party," The Herald editor continued, "and published it to the world, never stooping to dirty, low-down tricks, billingsgate or abuse, to defeat the Populists."29
One will recall that some three months earlier Mr. Holder had accused the Populists of using money, whisky, and other corrupting means to get votes.
While their criticism of the Populists became less severe, by no means did The Herald and its editor give up the fight against them. Consider this:
We made a clean fight in all the contests just closed, and, although, defeated, we are not daunted, for, should an all-wise Providence permit, we will be found showing up the fallacies of Populism two years hence, and exposing its methods.30
With elections over for the time being, Mr. Holder found time to get in a few editorial points for prohibition and to attend "The Convention." Under such a heading, in the July 19, 1895, issue, he wrote, "We had never been to a convention of the Georgia Weekly Press Association, so the editor boarded the G. J. & S. railroad last Wednesday morning and went to Gainesville, where that body was in session."31 He devoted nearly three columns to the meeting, including the listing of new officers of the Association. W. S. Coleman of the Cedartown Standard was elected president.
In the issue of October 18, 1895, there was evidence that things were looking up for the farmer. "The present price of cotton has been a wind fall to the farmers of the South, " Mr. Holder wrote. "For the first time in several years they have made a cotton crop at a profit."32
Early in 1896 he began stepping up editorial activities designed to cause things for the Populists to look any way but up. "There is war in the Populist camp," Mr. Holder wrote on January 17, "and the brethren are not dwelling together in unity as of old." He continued, "The complaint is that the leaders are simply on a big hunt for office and are subordinating everything to their personal ambitions, and the cry is for new and more self-sacrificing leaders than now in command."33
In The Herald of the following week were those somber, mournful black column rules, denoting the death of a loved one. This time it was the editor's younger brother, Thomas R. Holder, Jr., whom John and Ada Holder had taken in as a partner and made managing editor of the paper from the start. While Mr. Holder did not miss editing an issue of the paper, as he did at the time of his child's death, he called the burial of his brother "the saddest hour of my life."
"As for The Jackson Herald," he wrote on January 31, 1896, "it will be conducted in the future by myself, I being the surviving member of the firm."
Continuing, he said:
I will be both editor and business manager, and providence permitting, I propose to keep The Herald up to the high standard it has attained.
We have had the hearty cooperation of the people of Jackson county in making the Herald one of the leading weekly papers in Georgia, and I ask the same kind consideration at their hands that they gave to the firm of Holder Bros.34
With this issue Mr. Holder was listed on the masthead as both editor and manager.
The Herald soon found itself right back in the thick of the political fight, leading up to the national Democratic convention. In the issue of July 17, 1896, Mr. Holder devoted five columns on the editorial page to sketches of Bryan and Sewell, the party's nominees for president and vice president, and to the Democratic platform. Beginning on August 7 and continuing through October 2, the paper ran the entire national, state, and county Democratic ticket, listing everybody from W. J. Bryan for president of the United States to W. A. Worsham for coroner of Jackson County.
Mr. Holder's strategy against the Populists this time included articles that tended to minimize the strength of the Third party. The following, commenting on a meeting at Harmony Grove, is typical:
The Populists rally here last Saturday was a signal failure. Dr. Gambrell's speech was a weak affair, and did not arouse any enthusiasm at all. There were 272 present by actual count, and nearly one half of those were Democrats and the other half were from four counties.35
The strategy did not work. "The Populists took everything in sight in Jackson county," The Herald editor said on October 16, 1896. "They didn't let the Democrats have even Coroner, or County Surveyor."36
Gloomier than ever was the Democratic situation when this headline appeared in The Herald of November 6, 1896: "Bryan is defeated and McKinley is elected."
Mr. Holder's comments were these:
The people of the United States passed upon the question of a gold standard and the bimetallic standard last Wednesday. When voting for McKinley they decided that the gold standard is best for the nation. We regret very much that the election went as it did, but the will of the people has been expressed at the ballot box and we can only submit.37
Spirits at The Herald office must have been lower than ever on January 8, 1897, for there appeared in the paper of that date this notice:
Notice is hereby given that from and after this date, that the advertising connected with the office of Clerk of the Superior Court, of Sheriff and Ordinary of said county will be changed from The Jackson Herald to the Jackson Economist, published at Winder in said county.38
Commenting on the Populists officers taking the legal advertisements from The Herald, Mr. Holder said later it was their right to do so if they saw proper. He said he would not pout about it, and sit with head in hands, and bewail how badly he had been treated. The Herald editor said he had renewed his efforts to make the paper better than ever.
Whatever the paper lost in county revenue, it made up in additional commercial advertisements. Said Mr. Holder on October 8, 1897, "One can readily see...that The Herald has a very large advertising patronage this fall."
He added:
Advertisers know and appreciate a good medium, and they know The Herald stands along at the top of country weeklies. The George P. Rowell Advertising Agency gives it credit for having the largest circulation of any paper published in the Ninth Congressional district.39
In the August 26, 1898, issue this growing newspaper printed the names of Democratic candidates for office. One of those listed was none other than John N. Holder, editor of The Jackson Herald. He was running for representatives from Jackson County.
Until now only death in the family had interrupted Mr. Holder's editorship of the paper. But he found campaigning against the Populists a time-consuming task, and, too, he likely could not condescend to editorialize in favor of his own candidacy. In any case there appeared in the issue with the names of the Democratic candidates this item: "The readers of The Herald will take notice that John. N. Ross is responsible for whatever may appear editorially on this page of the paper from this date until after the election in October."40
John. N. Ross was editor of The Herald from July 30, 1886, to March 22, 1889. Now he was chairman of the Democratic party in Jackson County.
In Mr. Holder's newspaper Mr. Ross wrote that Mr. Holder was the gifted and polished editor of The Herald, and a graduate of the State University. "He is in the very prime of life," Mr. Ross continued, "thoroughly posted on all public questions that affect the welfare of the people, and well equipped for legislative work...."41
Many Jackson countians must have agreed, for on October 7, 1898, The Herald could carry its first "VICTORY!" headline since 1892. Other headings were, "Jackson County Triumphant Once More," "Populists Snowed Under," and "Democrats Win Everything."
Among comments under the headlines were these:
We believe this to be the last great battle between Democrats and Populists in this county. Our people are tired of such unseemly strife, and conservative Populists are inclined to end it by returning to the Democratic fold.
Nothing could settle this matter in Jackson county except a game, determined fight. We have made it and captured everything in sight. Let us not be boastful in our conduct towards those who went down fighting gallantly.42
"The Legislature" was the headline over a story in the November 18, 1898, issue of The Herald announcing that Mr. Holder had been made chairman of the committee on excuse of members, and vice chairman of the committee on counties and county matters. The piece pointed out that he also was placed on committees of auditing, education, appropriations, and penitentiary.
A month later this item appeared in The Herald:
Editor Holder and his accomplished wife both being in Atlanta taking in the legislature and jubilee, it devolves upon the undersigned to get out The Herald this week, which we propose to do to the best of our ability. If we please its many readers, well and good, and if not, well then they will have the consolation of knowing that it will be the last of us.43
This was signed by Andrew J. Bell, the same man who put out the August 18, 1893, issue when Mr. and Mrs. Holder lost their baby.
So Mr. Holder and The Herald no longer were merely commenting on politics. They were in politics now, and would be for the next thirty-four years.
1. The Jackson Herald. May 6, 1892, quoting from the Athens Ledger.
2. E. Merton Coulter, A Short History of Georgia (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1933), p. 372.
3. Loc cit.
4. Loc. cit.
5. The Jackson Herald. August 7, 1891.
6. Coulter, op. cit., p. 373
7. The Jackson Herald. October 14, 1892.
8. Ibid., October 23, 1892.
9. Ibid., January 6, 1893.
10. Loc. cit.
11. The Jackson Herald. January 20, 1893.
12. Loc. cit.
13. Loc. cit.
14. Coulter, op. cit., p. 374
15. Loc. cit.
16. The Jackson Herald. July 21,1893.
17. Ibid., August 11, 1893.
18. Coulter, op. cit., p. 374.
19. The Jackson Herald. July 17, 1891.
20. Ibid., August 18, 1893.
21. Ibid., October 5, 1894
22. Loc. cit.
23. Loc. cit.
24. The Jackson Herald. January 4, 1895.
25. Ibid., January 11, 1895.
26. Ibid., January 18, 1895.
27. Loc. cit.
28. Loc. cit.
29. Loc. cit.
30. Loc. cit.
31. Ibid., July 19, 1895.
32. Ibid., October 18, 1895.
33. Ibid., January 17, 1896.
34. Ibid., January 31, 1896.
35. Ibid., September 25, 1896.
36. Ibid., October 16, 1896.
37. Ibid., November 6, 1896.
38. Ibid., January 8, 1897.
39. Ibid., October 8, 1897.
40. Ibid., August 26, 1898.
41. Ibid., September 2, 1898.
42. Ibid., October 7, 1898.
43. Ibid., December 16, 1898.
That is what the Athens Ledger had to say in 1892 about The Herald's fight against Populism. But before the battle ended in 1898, The Herald and the Democratic party in Jackson County had to take some telling strokes on the chin and twice come off the ropes to win.
Battle lines began shaping up as early as 1890, a year before John N. Holder became editor of The Herald. The Allaincemen, or Democrats if you prefer, were victorious in the state election that year. Liberal in their ideas, they passed many laws guaranteeing greater social justice.2
Nevertheless, this legislation was too conservative for many Alliancemen. There was the silk stocking faction, who held the position of power, and this displeased the wool hat element. The wool hatters came to believe that, in actuality, the Democrats had swallowed the Alliancemen rather than the other way around. Thus the desire for a third party, divorced from the Democrats.3
By 1892 there had arisen in national affairs, too, a party of discontent. Made up largely of farmers, it was called the People's party or the Populists. For these Georgia Alliancemen who wanted to get away from the Democrats, this was it.4
As early as August 7, 1891, Mr. Holder took cognizance of the Third party movement, and would have nothing to do with it. He wrote:
There are two great parties--Republicans and Democrats-- and a hybrid, the Third party. The Republican party is in favor of protecting the monopolist, the Democrats are in favor of the people, but the Third party--what can we say of it? Nothing, except that the people of Georgia don't want such a thing.5
Mr. Holder was to learn later that he was speaking for all the people of Georgia, particularly those in his own county.
It is true that most Alliancemen, or Democrats, refused to be led into a Third party. They held their convention and renominated Governor Northen. However, Populism made its appearance in '92, held its convention, and nominated W. L. Peek for governor.6
About a month before The Herald carried the "VICTORY!" headline and story proclaiming the election of President Cleveland, Mr. Holder happily could write that Northen had defeated Peek. Then he tried to discourage the Populists from further battle before they really had begun to fight. Said the editor following the governor's race:
We cannot see any plausibility or reason in keeping up the fight by the People's Party, when the fact is that Georgia is Democratic by seventy thousand majority. What is the use of causing bitterness and strife when the People's Party has no hope of accomplishing anything by so doing? We have had a fair test, and it is shown that the People's Party is in a hopeless minority.7
About a month after Cleveland was chosen president, Mr. Holder found himself getting in his final editorial barbs before the last election of a busy political year. This one was to be for county officers. "In our last issue," The Herald editor wrote on December 23, 1892, "we told the people who the Democrats had nominated to fill the county officers for the next two years."
He continued:
Now we are going to tell the people another thing, the Democrats of Jackson county must elect their candidates.
Every man who voted in that primary is honor bound to support the nominees.
The battle is on. Our lines are drawn up in battle array. Let every man on the side of Democracy prove a true soldier. We want to see every man stand to his gun, and in one more battle the fight will be won for all time to come. Democrats, we must elect our ticket by an overwhelming majority.8
As it turned out there were errors of judgment in the editorials of both before and after the presidential election. The People's Party was not in a hopeless minority, nor was the Democrats' fight for county offices to mean victory for all time to come.
But there was victory for the moment, and Mr. Holder could write on January 6, 1893, that "The Herald greets its readers this week in a good humor and with a broad smile. We wish every man, woman and child in the county good luck and prosperity during the year 1893."9
Editor Holder went on to explain why he was so elated. He pointed out that at one time Jackson seemed one of the strongest Third party counties in the state, and that apparently there was nothing to turn back the tide.
"But it has been turned," he wrote in the first issue of a new year. "The old Democratic party of the county is like a snow ball--the farther it goes the larger it gets....Every county officer for the next two years will be Democrats."10
There were other reasons for happiness at The Herald office. "We have a new press, on which this week's issue has been printed," wrote Mr. Holder in the paper of January 6.
Two weeks later, as the publication completed volume twelve and entered its thirteenth year, the editor again commented on the press. He said The Herald was printed on a Washington hand press for several years, but that it wasn't long before Editor Howard set this one aside and purchased a hand cylinder press. Until the first week of '93 the paper continued to be printed on this. The press Mr. Holder bought was a new steam power outfit, which he called "a great improvement on the old one...."11
The editor of eighteen months said he had made marked improvements in the office. "What money we have made, and we have made some," he asserted, "we have put it all back into the office in the shape of improvements in the mechanical department."12
Continuing, he said:
We have now one of the best equipped offices of any country weekly in Georgia....We can print from one thousand to fifteen hundred papers an hour. This enables us to do our work more quickly...and we would like to have more subscribers....We already have fifteen hundred subscribers, but a county with the population of Jackson ought to give their county paper at least two thousand subscribers.13
This goal had not been reached, however, on January 12, 1894, when the paper launched the first number of volume fourteen. "We would like to have two thousand subscribers by the beginning of next volume," Mr. Holder wrote in that issue.
He said, though, that The Herald had nothing to complain about, pointing out that circulation and advertising had increased, and that business was better in 1893 than it had ever been.
On September 29 of that year, under the heading "Pardonable Pride," Editor Holder said, "It is with great pleasure...that we announce...that we have the largest advertising patronage this fall we have ever had...during our connection with the paper."
In fact, advertising had increased to such an extent by October 27, 1893, that the issue of that date contained six pages. But evidently the advertising boom was in preparation for the Christmas trade, for by December 15, 1893, the paper was back to four pages.
While The Jackson Herald seems to have prospered fairly well in 1893, such was not the case for Georgia and the country as a whole. Following the election of President Cleveland, Governor Northen, and the Democratic slate of officers for Jackson County in 1892, economic conditions continued to grow steadily worse.14
Cotton came to sell for less than five cents a pound. Property values dropped from $421,000,000 in 1892 to $338,000,000 in 1893.15 Mr. Holder had much to say during the latter year about the sad financial state of affairs. In July of 1891 The Herald editor lay the blame for the money stringency on the oversupply of cotton. But come July, 1893, he wrote:
The present financial distress of the South had not been brought about, in our opinion, solely by political mismanagement or the planting of too much cotton and too little corn. These...have added fuel to the flame, but the main agent in bringing about this unfortunate state of affairs has been...the almost universal habit our people have fallen into of living beyond their means.16
In less than a month conditions had grown so bad that President Cleveland called Congress into extra session. Commenting on the president's message to the legislators, The Herald editor said, "He makes no effort to cover up or hide the present distressing state of our monetary affairs, but lays the entire matter bare and rightfully charges the responsibility for it all upon past vicious legislation."17
Whatever the causes, the situation turned many Georgians into Populists and made Tom Watson their leader.18
Mr. Holder had put out but one issue of The Herald before he was taking note of Watson and expressing concern over the McDuffie countian's political course. "Yes," wrote the editor on July 17, 1891, "Mr. Watson is going to be one of the most brilliant statesmen in the South--that is, as soon as his enthusiasm cools down to a tolerably safe temperature."19
In passing, it might be well to note that the first interruption in Mr. Holder's editorship occurred in 1893. On August 18, under the heading "Explanatory," was this note: "Editor Holder's affliction, in the death of his infant daughter, will account for the absence of all matter of a political nature this week." This was signed, "A. J. Bell, Acting Editor."20
Almost a year after the death of his child Mr. Holder again found himself with the editorial task of trying to elect a Democratic governor and Democratic county officers. In the issue of August 10, 1894, he announced the state Democratic ticket, and devoted three columns to the convention at which W. Y. Atkinson was nominated for governor.
Nearly two months later one could tell from the somber way The Herald announced the election of the state Democratic ticket that all had not gone well in the county. "The October election in Georgia has passed off and the full Democratic ticket is elected," Mr. Holder wrote simply.21
Getting around to the county, he said the vote was the largest ever polled in Jackson. Eight hundred and thirty-one persons cast their ballots. And the majority cast them in a direction that did not please Editor Holder. Said he, "...The face of the returns indicate a Populist majority of one hundred and sixty."22
But The Herald did not give up that easily. Mr. Holder wrote following the election:
Although the Populists denounced the use of money, whiskey and other corrupting means in elections, yet they violated every pledge they made not to use money, whiskey and other corrupting means....Men were voted in this county whose residences are in other counties, and men who have tax executions against them an inch thick cast their ballots for Populism.
After all the fraudulent votes are thrown out, and then, if the populists have a majority of the votes of Jackson county, no one is more ready to surrender to the will of the majority than ourselves.23
Surrender he did. There were not as many fraudulent votes as Editor Holder must have thought, for on January 4, 1895, he stated, "The candidates all went down in defeat, and Jackson county's officers are all Populists except Judge Bell, the Ordinary, whose election does not occur till two years hence."24
The best he could do in defense of his party a week later was to write, "The Democratic candidates in this county scared their Populist opponents terribly bad, if they didn't beat them."25
In yet another week, as The Herald began volume fifteen, there was evidence that Mr. Holder felt no bitterness toward his political adversaries. Commenting on the paper's anniversary, he said, "It begins a new year well, hearty, happy and with the best of feelings towards the world and having no malice toward its enemies."26
Of conditions in general, he had this to say:
The year just past has been an eventful one. Hard times...have been harder than ever. Cotton had brought a smaller price per pound than it has in several years, and of course this hurt the farmers, and it worked harm to the merchant, and, in fact, everybody else in this section, including the newspaper man. 27
Mr. Holder went on to say that The Jackson Herald had suffered along with all other enterprises. He added, though, that its subscription list was larger than it had ever been.
In the same issue there are indications that the paper also was receiving a record amount of cursing at this time. Here is the way the editor stated it:
We guess The Jackson Herald gets more genuine cursing and abuse than everything else in the county combined. Our opponents, the Populists, read it and abuse it. They read, pull their hair, swear they will give us a licking, or at least will give us a piece of their mind, the very next time they lay eyes on us. But, after reflection, our good friends reconsider, or at least we haven't toted many whippings or enjoyed many cussings. This reconsideration on the part of our friends is quite kind, and we thank them for it.28
Mr. Holder was not one to join those he could not lick, but there is some basis for believing that he tried to smooth out some of the rough spots between himself and the Populists. He admitted he had been as strong an opponent as the Third party ever had, but said he had been an open, honest fighter.
"We have spoken right out just what our ideas were concerning the Third party," The Herald editor continued, "and published it to the world, never stooping to dirty, low-down tricks, billingsgate or abuse, to defeat the Populists."29
One will recall that some three months earlier Mr. Holder had accused the Populists of using money, whisky, and other corrupting means to get votes.
While their criticism of the Populists became less severe, by no means did The Herald and its editor give up the fight against them. Consider this:
We made a clean fight in all the contests just closed, and, although, defeated, we are not daunted, for, should an all-wise Providence permit, we will be found showing up the fallacies of Populism two years hence, and exposing its methods.30
With elections over for the time being, Mr. Holder found time to get in a few editorial points for prohibition and to attend "The Convention." Under such a heading, in the July 19, 1895, issue, he wrote, "We had never been to a convention of the Georgia Weekly Press Association, so the editor boarded the G. J. & S. railroad last Wednesday morning and went to Gainesville, where that body was in session."31 He devoted nearly three columns to the meeting, including the listing of new officers of the Association. W. S. Coleman of the Cedartown Standard was elected president.
In the issue of October 18, 1895, there was evidence that things were looking up for the farmer. "The present price of cotton has been a wind fall to the farmers of the South, " Mr. Holder wrote. "For the first time in several years they have made a cotton crop at a profit."32
Early in 1896 he began stepping up editorial activities designed to cause things for the Populists to look any way but up. "There is war in the Populist camp," Mr. Holder wrote on January 17, "and the brethren are not dwelling together in unity as of old." He continued, "The complaint is that the leaders are simply on a big hunt for office and are subordinating everything to their personal ambitions, and the cry is for new and more self-sacrificing leaders than now in command."33
In The Herald of the following week were those somber, mournful black column rules, denoting the death of a loved one. This time it was the editor's younger brother, Thomas R. Holder, Jr., whom John and Ada Holder had taken in as a partner and made managing editor of the paper from the start. While Mr. Holder did not miss editing an issue of the paper, as he did at the time of his child's death, he called the burial of his brother "the saddest hour of my life."
"As for The Jackson Herald," he wrote on January 31, 1896, "it will be conducted in the future by myself, I being the surviving member of the firm."
Continuing, he said:
I will be both editor and business manager, and providence permitting, I propose to keep The Herald up to the high standard it has attained.
We have had the hearty cooperation of the people of Jackson county in making the Herald one of the leading weekly papers in Georgia, and I ask the same kind consideration at their hands that they gave to the firm of Holder Bros.34
With this issue Mr. Holder was listed on the masthead as both editor and manager.
The Herald soon found itself right back in the thick of the political fight, leading up to the national Democratic convention. In the issue of July 17, 1896, Mr. Holder devoted five columns on the editorial page to sketches of Bryan and Sewell, the party's nominees for president and vice president, and to the Democratic platform. Beginning on August 7 and continuing through October 2, the paper ran the entire national, state, and county Democratic ticket, listing everybody from W. J. Bryan for president of the United States to W. A. Worsham for coroner of Jackson County.
Mr. Holder's strategy against the Populists this time included articles that tended to minimize the strength of the Third party. The following, commenting on a meeting at Harmony Grove, is typical:
The Populists rally here last Saturday was a signal failure. Dr. Gambrell's speech was a weak affair, and did not arouse any enthusiasm at all. There were 272 present by actual count, and nearly one half of those were Democrats and the other half were from four counties.35
The strategy did not work. "The Populists took everything in sight in Jackson county," The Herald editor said on October 16, 1896. "They didn't let the Democrats have even Coroner, or County Surveyor."36
Gloomier than ever was the Democratic situation when this headline appeared in The Herald of November 6, 1896: "Bryan is defeated and McKinley is elected."
Mr. Holder's comments were these:
The people of the United States passed upon the question of a gold standard and the bimetallic standard last Wednesday. When voting for McKinley they decided that the gold standard is best for the nation. We regret very much that the election went as it did, but the will of the people has been expressed at the ballot box and we can only submit.37
Spirits at The Herald office must have been lower than ever on January 8, 1897, for there appeared in the paper of that date this notice:
Notice is hereby given that from and after this date, that the advertising connected with the office of Clerk of the Superior Court, of Sheriff and Ordinary of said county will be changed from The Jackson Herald to the Jackson Economist, published at Winder in said county.38
Commenting on the Populists officers taking the legal advertisements from The Herald, Mr. Holder said later it was their right to do so if they saw proper. He said he would not pout about it, and sit with head in hands, and bewail how badly he had been treated. The Herald editor said he had renewed his efforts to make the paper better than ever.
Whatever the paper lost in county revenue, it made up in additional commercial advertisements. Said Mr. Holder on October 8, 1897, "One can readily see...that The Herald has a very large advertising patronage this fall."
He added:
Advertisers know and appreciate a good medium, and they know The Herald stands along at the top of country weeklies. The George P. Rowell Advertising Agency gives it credit for having the largest circulation of any paper published in the Ninth Congressional district.39
In the August 26, 1898, issue this growing newspaper printed the names of Democratic candidates for office. One of those listed was none other than John N. Holder, editor of The Jackson Herald. He was running for representatives from Jackson County.
Until now only death in the family had interrupted Mr. Holder's editorship of the paper. But he found campaigning against the Populists a time-consuming task, and, too, he likely could not condescend to editorialize in favor of his own candidacy. In any case there appeared in the issue with the names of the Democratic candidates this item: "The readers of The Herald will take notice that John. N. Ross is responsible for whatever may appear editorially on this page of the paper from this date until after the election in October."40
John. N. Ross was editor of The Herald from July 30, 1886, to March 22, 1889. Now he was chairman of the Democratic party in Jackson County.
In Mr. Holder's newspaper Mr. Ross wrote that Mr. Holder was the gifted and polished editor of The Herald, and a graduate of the State University. "He is in the very prime of life," Mr. Ross continued, "thoroughly posted on all public questions that affect the welfare of the people, and well equipped for legislative work...."41
Many Jackson countians must have agreed, for on October 7, 1898, The Herald could carry its first "VICTORY!" headline since 1892. Other headings were, "Jackson County Triumphant Once More," "Populists Snowed Under," and "Democrats Win Everything."
Among comments under the headlines were these:
We believe this to be the last great battle between Democrats and Populists in this county. Our people are tired of such unseemly strife, and conservative Populists are inclined to end it by returning to the Democratic fold.
Nothing could settle this matter in Jackson county except a game, determined fight. We have made it and captured everything in sight. Let us not be boastful in our conduct towards those who went down fighting gallantly.42
"The Legislature" was the headline over a story in the November 18, 1898, issue of The Herald announcing that Mr. Holder had been made chairman of the committee on excuse of members, and vice chairman of the committee on counties and county matters. The piece pointed out that he also was placed on committees of auditing, education, appropriations, and penitentiary.
A month later this item appeared in The Herald:
Editor Holder and his accomplished wife both being in Atlanta taking in the legislature and jubilee, it devolves upon the undersigned to get out The Herald this week, which we propose to do to the best of our ability. If we please its many readers, well and good, and if not, well then they will have the consolation of knowing that it will be the last of us.43
This was signed by Andrew J. Bell, the same man who put out the August 18, 1893, issue when Mr. and Mrs. Holder lost their baby.
So Mr. Holder and The Herald no longer were merely commenting on politics. They were in politics now, and would be for the next thirty-four years.
1. The Jackson Herald. May 6, 1892, quoting from the Athens Ledger.
2. E. Merton Coulter, A Short History of Georgia (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1933), p. 372.
3. Loc cit.
4. Loc. cit.
5. The Jackson Herald. August 7, 1891.
6. Coulter, op. cit., p. 373
7. The Jackson Herald. October 14, 1892.
8. Ibid., October 23, 1892.
9. Ibid., January 6, 1893.
10. Loc. cit.
11. The Jackson Herald. January 20, 1893.
12. Loc. cit.
13. Loc. cit.
14. Coulter, op. cit., p. 374
15. Loc. cit.
16. The Jackson Herald. July 21,1893.
17. Ibid., August 11, 1893.
18. Coulter, op. cit., p. 374.
19. The Jackson Herald. July 17, 1891.
20. Ibid., August 18, 1893.
21. Ibid., October 5, 1894
22. Loc. cit.
23. Loc. cit.
24. The Jackson Herald. January 4, 1895.
25. Ibid., January 11, 1895.
26. Ibid., January 18, 1895.
27. Loc. cit.
28. Loc. cit.
29. Loc. cit.
30. Loc. cit.
31. Ibid., July 19, 1895.
32. Ibid., October 18, 1895.
33. Ibid., January 17, 1896.
34. Ibid., January 31, 1896.
35. Ibid., September 25, 1896.
36. Ibid., October 16, 1896.
37. Ibid., November 6, 1896.
38. Ibid., January 8, 1897.
39. Ibid., October 8, 1897.
40. Ibid., August 26, 1898.
41. Ibid., September 2, 1898.
42. Ibid., October 7, 1898.
43. Ibid., December 16, 1898.