A TENNESSEE TRAGEDY. Four Mormon Missionaries and their Defenders Murdered.

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 69, 27 September 1884, Page 6

A TENNESSEE TRAGEDY. Four Mormon Missionaries and their Defenders Murdered.

Nashville, Term., August 14th.— A despatch from Centerville corroborates the report of the murder of Mormons in Lewis county by masked men last Sunday morning. The raiding party numbered about forty. Thirteen of these attacked the house of Martin Condor, where a Mormon meeting was in progress. Forcing open the doors, they were encountered by young Martin .Condor, who was armed with a gun. In the effort to disarm him, one of the raiders was struck with the gun, unmasking him, when he drew a pistol and shot Condor in the bowels. After staggering a few steps, Condor was shot again by one of the party with buckshot and killed instantly. At the same instant another of the attacking party fired upon a Mormon elder named Cflbbs, who was partly hidden by the wife of the old man Condor, killing Gibbs, and severely wounding Mrs Condor in the thigh. He then fired the remaining load in the gun at a Morman elder named Berry, hiding behind a bed, and killed him instantly. Another Mormon elder in the house who ran out at the back door was pursued by two of the attacking party stationed outside. They fired on him as he ran away, and it is not known whether he was killed or not. After killing Berry, the two masked men started to leave, and just as they got out of the house, J. R. Hudson fired and killed Dave Hinson, one of the masked men. One of Hinson 's party stood over his body and fired two loads of buck shot, and Hudson wasliterally riddled. The Mormons, in fear of another attack, did not make search until Mouday.when they found the Mormon that ran away from Condor's dead, and it is rumoured that the other missing elder has been found dead. The Mormons claim to have been sent here direct from Utah to make converts and establish churches. Fuller particulars of the anti-Mormon riot confirm the reports heretofore telegraphed. Another Mormon elder was today found dead in the woods, and still another is missing, making seven persons who are now known to have lost their lives in the affair,

used on the Butler's Spur and May Queen Spur are altogether out of proportion to their requirements. Now, from the faulty construction of the tramway to its management, is but a short step. Prom the first (of the tramway being in operation) there has been a want of system, showing that traffic management was not the manager's forto. At the commencement the trucks were some tiiuos chalk marked, snowing at which claim they weie filled, ana more recently a little tin label, attached to a piece of wire, is hung on to the truck, tv indicate into which hopper at tue battery it. is to be delivered. Now, as it is considered advisable by the powers that be that the battery manager should be likewise the tramway manager, the books of the tramway are kept by the battery clerk. And, to strain a further point in diverging from all acknowldged businiss principles, it is so arranged the tramway hands go to the hoppers of the mines crushiug at their will, and at the end of the month the mine managers are informed at the battery wnat quantity of quartz have been taken ftom iheir hoppers ; and with this they are charged as the quantity crushed. This process might be looked upon with some favour in tne days when tue lion lays down with the lamb, but I would suggest, until such a consummation takes place, that ordinary business principles be ad'ieied to. In* looking over tue condition 1 ? of ti»e Fiako County Council to let the tramway, now laying nt the Warden's Office, we iind to guide the would -bo j tenderer, the result of three months' working of tne tramway ending August Kith, ltfcll. In this the labour for the tramway, independent of slip*, is £150 us 7d, £15'; 4s lid, £U[S ; and each month a charge of £5 17s is made for manager and secretary, whilst a further c.iarge un ler the heading of sundries is made of £23 2s lid. £G 9s lOd, and £22 10s ; fn? is very ambiguous, and a most unsatisfactory charge under such a head ing. The quantity of qiv.u-tz sent down each month are respectively 561, 900, and 931 trucks, which, at 4s Gd per truck, amounts to £539 Us, whilst the up- freights cometo £23 5s 3d, £9 2s 6d, and £13 Us, in all £45 18s 9d, or a gross earning in the three months of £631 7s 6d. A balance in favour of the tramway is thus sho»n of £98 8s s>l for three months' working, but I contend a very different showing should be made. I would first cut out manager and secretary charges altogether, and I will show you how ; in the place of the tin label and wire I would institute a tell-tale system. On each truck I would have placed a little metal frame into which would be put a tin plate with the name of the mine from which the truck was filled ; when the truck arrives at the battery the receiver sees by the plate to which hopper the quartz are consigned, empties it, takes a note in his book kept for the purpose of checking the man at the despatoh end (who also enters every truck despatched), and then remove the plate and drop it into a box which the Battery Company keeps the key of, and who should empty it every night, charge the mines with tne quantity of quartz received for crushing, indicated by the plates, and when the mine managers call in the morning to inspect their crushings, they would receive the plates booked against them. At the end of the month after the despatoh and receiving man on tramway have checked their books, an account is made out by the working foreman of the tramway to each of the gold mining companies. The managers having received daily the plates from the buttery, are at once in a position lo check the accouuN, whicu done, tiie accounts s.iould be tent to the Pinko County Council's clerk to collect. Tht labour account does not give tne quantity of men employed, but I tai^e it at le.ist £20 per month can be saved on this item alone, wuilst an incr'abO in the quantity of quartz sent o\er the line would not proportionately increase the expenditure. Now. jis to suiid.ies, one connot judge how they could be cut down unless the items were made public. This undoubtedly tlw Piako Connly Council will do. The clerk of the council informed m* when at Cambridge that no inventory had yet been made of the tramway's rolling stock and other plant. This must surely be as necessary as it is for a storekeeper to take periodically Ins stock. A careful inventory should be made by the council's engineer of their property, and he should be held responsible for it. The proposed reductions, together with the present management's allowing of a balance in favour of the tramway, points to lower tramway charges, and surely the Warden wi 1 not consent to let an outside party get what the field should have in its present nonpaying and languid condition. All blunders, both in constr etion and management of the tramway by JVIr Adams, have been excused away in all sorts of forms, but it does not do away with their existence. We want good management, and the right jnan in the right place, ami however ambitious a man is he should control and regulate that ambition, when it inflicts injuries on an important community like ours. To be raised from obscurity at a bound and become a battery manager, a controller of a goldfields tramway, a dictator of how the mines are to be managed, a member °f the licensing committee, a member of the school committee, a most abtive mover in tbe election for a councillor for thf district, is too much joy ; such distinctions heaped on any one, as it where, momentarily, is enough to make » man form a false opinion of bis own

capabilities. Iv conrlusion, I will oxpress a hope tuat we . i all nut see any of fi.it bad taste displayed at t ! -e coming election that was too appment at the lat" one. When the election lor a iriember of the PiaUo County Council is over, it should be over, and no attempt at boycotting people who voted according to their own convictions, but not on Mr Adams' ticket. An hotel to be told it wi'l suffer, a storekeeper to be lold you will get no more orders, a steamboat company to be told you will get no more freights from a certain party, is disgraceful ; it is not only an outrage on the people's liberty, but a di^.ence to the century we live in. Let one and all stick up for their rights of liberty, and the Despot will hive the worst of it in the long run. — Yours faithfully, Ed. Kersey Cooper.