682 Page – American State Trials 1918 Volume X Leo Frank Document

Here is the translated text as follows:

650 X. AMERICAN STATE TRIALS.

Asa Candler has contributed to every philanthropic enterprise and always stood for the highest and best things in public and private life. Shall we tear him down for a man who admits and boasts that he has committed every crime on the statute books except the crime of murder—a man who brags that he provided for a woman when he was fifteen years of age, who brags that he drank two quarts of liquor a day until Georgia went bone-dry, a man who brags that he was tried for assault and tells about the time a husband caught him invading his home? Shall we tear down Asa Candler to further the scheme of a man who does not stop with his blood-curdling record, but drags this woman into a blackmail attempt?

The record of Mr. Candler has been a splendid one. His career in Atlanta has been constructive and not destructive. He has helped to make Atlanta what she is today, and to think that a creature like this Cook should have the effrontery to try to tear down the record of a man like Asa G. Candler! Asa Candler is not a difficult man to approach. He is just everyday folks, like you and me, despite all his money. He is open to this kind of sneaking attack, by reason of his very type of plain, everyday man.

Mayor Candler is an old-fashioned man and transacts business in an old-fashioned way. Anybody can go to his office and see him. Mrs. Hirsch took advantage of this habit which he has always followed and laid her plans which Cook had formulated. She is Cook's victim and doesn't know it. Since this blackmail case came up, I am afraid to let a woman come into my office, and I am a poor man compared with Mr. Candler, and only a moderately good man as compared to him. There is no telling how many men in Atlanta are paying blackmail and keeping their mouths silent. But Mayor Candler had the nerve to fight, even though he knew they would smirch him from head to foot.

No one is safe from the blackmailer of this type, but I am thankful to say that I believe after this case, because of Mr. Candler's bravery, that blackmailers will roost a little lower in Atlanta. We don't know how many good men have paid up and kept quiet in the past.