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268 X. AMERICAN STATE TRIALS.

never said a word about Mary’s envelope. There's your con-
spiracy, with Jim Conley’s story as its foundation. It’s too
thin. It’s preposterous.

Then my friend Hooper says Frank discharged Gantt be-
cause he saw Gantt talking to Mary Phagan. If you con-
vict men on such distorted evidence as this, why you’d be
hanging men perpetually. Gantt, in the first place, doesn’t
come into this case in any good light. It is ridiculously ab-
surd to bring his discharge into this plot of the defense.
Why, even Grace Hicks, who worked with Mary Phagan, and
who is a sister-in-law of Boots Rogers, says that Frank did
not know the little girl.

Hooper also says that bad things are going on in the pen-
cil factory, and that it is natural for men to cast about for
girls in such environmenta, We are not trying this case on
whether you or I or Frank had been perfect in the past. This
is acase of murder. Let him who is without sin cast the first
stone. I say this much, and that is that there has been as
little evidenca of such conditions in this plant as any other
of its kind you can find in the city. They have produced
some, of course, but it is an easy matter to locate some ten
or twelve disgruntled ex-employees who are vengeful enough
to swear against their former superintendent, even though
they don’t know him exeept by sight.

I want to ask this much: Conld Frank have remained at
the head of this concern if he had been as loose morally aa
the state bas striven to show? If he had carried on with the
girls of the place as my friend alleged, wouldn’t the entire
working force have been demoralized, ruined? He may have
looked into this dressing room, as the little Jackson girl says,
but, if he did, it was done to see that the girls weren’t loiter-
ing. There were no lavatories, no toilets, no baths in these
dressing rooms. The girls only changed their top garments,
He wouldn’t have seen much if he had peered into the place,
You can go to Piedmont park any day-and see girls and ©
women with a whole lot less on their persons, And to the
shows any night you can see the actresses with almost nothing

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