Muncie Post-Democrat, Muncie, Delaware County, 19 November 1925 — Page 1

THE POST - DEMOCRAT

.Volume 5—No. 42.

MUNCIE, INDIANA, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1925.

Price 5 Cents a Copy—$2.00 a Year

Nearly Thirty Thousand Dollars

Goes to the Hoffman Gravel Trust

Sheriff Enriched at Expense of the Taxpayers, Piles up Gravel and Depletes Treasury - Truitt Says Gravel Must be “Cured.”

that that gravel had to be treated that way. It was reserved for the scientists in the Billy Williams laboratory to make the astounding discovery that uncured gravel was unfit for use. In the old days, when unscientific and uncouth democrats were in power in the county, we had a sheriff who attended solely to the sheriff business and a road superintendent and set of county commissioners who knew so little of the science of curing gravel that it was dug from the ground and hauled di-

rectly to the roads. THE DIFFERENCE.

In the year 1915, the salaries of George Saunders, the democratic road superintendent and the assistants, and the cost of all labor, gravel and other materials used on the roads of Delaware county for the entire year was considerably less than the amount paid to Hoffman for gravel alone in eleven

months of the year 1925 !

While the democrats were in power the system was used of buying‘gravel as it was needed, from fanners whose pits were convenient to the roads to be repaired. It was bought as it was needed and the comparatively small amounts paid for the gravel were distributed among many, f There was no sheriff’s gravel trust in those days and the county did not have its surplus £unds tied up in huge heaps of unused gravel sufficient to surface the roads of a half dozen

counties the size of Delaware.

But there was one thing that Delaware county did have on the 31st day of December, 1918, when they handed the reins over to Billy Williams, and that was a huge heap of dollars in

Delaware county is broke, but Sheriff Harry Hoffman has

no complaints to offer.

It is largely because of the activities of the sheriff and others of his particular brand of statesmanship that the county

strong box is now empty.

Since January the county commissioners have allowed il-

legal claims for gravel “lifted” by Hoffman’s “dummy,” Claud

Hines, aggregating in their entirety $29,443.33.

Mr. Hoffman has also profited through illegal road contracts, the public treasury, two hundred thousand of them; enough, his latest act of impudent effrontery being the construction of in fact> to make a pile as i arge as one of H hrry Hoffman’s

the Samuel H. Dragoo road, better known as the West Jackson heaps of sugar-cured gravel, street pike. I k

DOLLARS INSTEAD OF GRAVEL.

FELONIOUS CONTRACTS. >

Those frugal, old fashioned souls conceivet the idea of pil-

Participating in this contract was a felony in itself. The ipg up the people’s money and letting it cure n the vaults of manner in which the road was constructed, under the^supervis- Muncle’s banking institutions-: The expeft gc-'p "f +he Billy ion of Wiley West, a Billy Williams henchman, drew loud pro- Williams school of technology soon remedied this, tests from farmers living in the vicinity of the road, but their The money is a n g 0 ne, the county is in debt one hundred protests availed them nothing. thousand dollars, and there is nothing to show for it but a few The machine cares little for the indignant outcries of mere new mountain ranges of cured, half-cured and uncured gravel, taxpayers, who settle the bills. In its secret conclaves, the ma-' As an 0 ff et f 0 r this disaster, however, Sheriff Hoffman chine designates that taxpayers as suckers, and come-ons, } ias j n three years acquired several valuable residence properplaced on earth by Almighty God for the sole and only purpose ties, a $32,000 business iblock and a man’s sized bank account, of working hard and making money that will eventually find No denial has ever been made by Sheriff Hoffman, who is its way into the pockets of political leeches. i also the republican county chairman, that the gravel and road EXPOSED BY POST-DEMOCRAT. I contracts are his. If he did no one would believe him. Money

| can not be picked from trees, therefore he would have a hard

A year ago last fall the Post-Democrat exposed some of the time explaining how he started three years ago with practically doings of the gang that has looted the treasury. A little gravel nothing and on a three thousand a year salary, saved fifty thou-

deal was pulled off on the Whitney farm, in Perry township. ! san d dollars in the three years.

We also dug up considerable record, disclosing the inter-1 Hoffman is to be an important figure, we are told, in the esting and instructive fact that Hoffman and his secret partner new Billy Williams city administration which goes into power were paid during the year $21,000 for the sale of gravel to the the first of January. He will take no appointment, he says, but county and that thousands of dollars were paid to C. E. Marsh- that does not mean that he will keep his hands off the contract-

man, a relative jby marriage of County Commissioner John Me- j ng business in Muncie.

Creary, for claims of a similar nature.

The Post-Democrat published the story and it soon spread like wildfire through the county. The three republican commissioners who had contracted for the gravel and ‘ allowed the

claims, were candidates in the fall election.

The country is overwhelmingly republican, but notwithstanding that it was “presidential year,” five townships were carried by the democratic candidates for commissioner and if the city people had been sufficiently aroused over the outrage at that time, the small majorities received by the commission-

ers would have been easily overcome.

HIDES ARE THICK.

The lesson taught by the wholesale revolt against the machine in the country had no effect whatever on the thick hides

WANT IT AGAIN.

Next spring we are told, two of the gravel cure specialists, Commissioners Truitt and Jackson, will be candidates for renomination. Having been largely responsible for the sorry financial straits in which the county now finds itself, John and

Andy are pressing their luck, so to speak.

The independent republicans in the rural districts went on a strike in 1924 and voted for democrats and the anti-machine republicans of the city of Muncie followed suit in the recent

municipal election.

Forcasting the result of the primary next May, the PostDemocrat would say that things look decidedly blue for John of the mechanics in charge of the road roller which has flat- an d Andy and for all other republican candidates slated jby the I tened the community fund. ; Billy Williams machine. “Git aplenty while yer gittin’,” was evidently the motto of It takes time to cure gravel, according to the Truitt formuthe sheriff. A danger signal meant nothing to him, nor to the an d it takes time to cure Delaware county republicans of commissioners who knowingly honored contracts that would t* 16 habit of voting for republicans, regardless of their fitness mean a prison term to one not protected by the machine. He for office and past records. plunged deeper than ever, taking down ten thousand dollars 1 Having swallowed enough bitter doses in the past eight more for gravel this year in eleven months than he did in the y ears f° deliver their anatomies of the last vestige of party entire twelve the year before. , bias, we believe the cure is complete. Let’s go! Huge piles of unused gravel may be seen standing in vari- j O ous parts of the county. Under the terms of the contracts enter- '' RAZZBERRIES ARE RIPE ed into between Hoffman’s go-between and the county commis- ^ sioners the gravel is paid for as soon as it is lifted. ! After all the appointments are made on motion of Billy Wil- • n M ge ^° Ug ’ f f c “ mmlsslon ’ at a recent hea r- hams, seconded by John ampton, the air will be filled with the mg held in Muncie asked why in the heck the county needed shrieks and moans of stricken patriots, who received jolts inall that gravel piled up and paid for in advance. stead of jobs . BiUy was very kin ^ throughout the camp i ign . H e “CURRING” GRAVEL. allowed John to ipake all the promises he wanted to. Razzber- ^ . . tv. m ‘4.4. £ j . , ries are now ri P e - The victims will come and tell papa. They Commissioner John Truitt, forced to make some sort of an always do. Our buzzom always expands with a vast sympathy explanatmn to the state taxing officer declared on the witness for the double crossed. We have had it handed our way so often stand that the gravel was lifted and left ,n piles for several, that we know how they feel. We have a hunch that the crop years before using in order that itmight be thoroughly cured! j will be unusually large this time. It required a powerful lot of ^ Udse H , 0Ugh very polnted y a " d sarcastically declared, promising to seduce six thousand odd voters into taking a that curing gravel was a new wrinkie. He had never heard | chance on a Billy Williams administration.

The Misguided

Parson

Rev. Edgar Fay Daugherty, pastor of the First Christian church, who v ent on record in print on the Sunday preceding the city election that he intended to vote for John Hampton because he “liked” him, is having more than his share of trouble in attempting to convince his parishioners that he made a wise choice, or that his political preachment has added any to his popularity or to his status as a good picker. “The parson,” as he styled himself in his political document disguised as a church bulletin, has only lived in Muncie a short time and it is evident that during his brief residence here his mental faculties have not been registering properly. The best citizens of Muncie, almost without exception, vigorously opposed the election of John Hampton. Many of them liked John, all right, but thinking people do not vote Tom, Dick or Harry into office merely because they like them. It is quite likely that John had that preacher “jollied” to a standstill. The Billy Williams type of politician, is, without exception, the hand shaking, back slapping type, Billy himself is a pastmaster at the jollying game and his understudy, the may-or-soon-to-be, is an apt pupil. Mr. Daugherty has not lived long enough in Muncie to change very many people’s views about candidates selected by the republican machine. He has been preaching occasional sermons since the election which are plentifully sprinkled with allusions to misguided newspapers and individuals who seek to

disturb the peace afiitt-

all heard that kind of bunk before.

: '• ■ 'Mfrg ■ ■> .

The Post-Democrat is" charitable enough to charge the sentiments and utterances of this misguided parson to a dense and profound misunderstanding of the kind of a mess he was gating himself into by attempting to underwrite the Hampton administration and to offer himself as surety cn the bond of the gang that is about to put on the big show in Muncie. If Brother Daugherty really understands things here, he would be contrite instead of chesty. There was only one other minister in Muncie who lent his name to the Hampton candidacy, and that was Rev. W. E. Sayers, of the Freinds’ church, who had reasons of his own, which are well known. It is rather disheartening to find a minister of the gospel who openly aligns himself with a candidate for mayor who had the solid support of all the law-breaking elements in Muncie, but that is exactly the thing that Rev. Daugherty did. On election day hootlegegrs, gamblers and prostitutes worked openly at the polls for Hampton in nearly every precinct in the city and liquor supplied by the gangsters flowed like wat-

It is possible that Mr. Daugherty did not know this. Possibly he remained at home on election day and prayed for the success of Hampton, instead of visiting the various polling places and making a personal invoice of the elements that were banded together to put over the machine candidate. Those who know the practical game of politics as it is played in Muncie, understand the situation here thoroughly, and it is merely irritates them when some bombastic carpetbagger hits town and proceeds to air his views before he has discovered the location of the court house and the city hall. Muncie people are pretty well divided between two opposing groups, one consisting of the Billy Williams bi-partisan machine and the other made up of independent democrats and republicans v/ho will always oppose any machine-made candidate, no matter how much they personally like him. If Mr. .Daugherty remains long enough in our midst, and if he permits his powers of observation to function normally, he will soon discover what we are talking about. All he wmild have to do would be to put on false whiskers and spend an hour or so in Brownie’s emporium on Adams street with his ears open or delve for’an hour or two among the denizens of the “redlight,” in order to find out what a tough job he is going to have to keep the Hampton administration in the straight and narrow path. We are not making these statements with the idea in view of trying to wean Mr. Daugherty away from his false gods. It will be up to him to wean himself. We are merely meeting an issue squarely which was presented by Mr. Daugherty himself when he put out a political pamphlet falsely labeled as a church bulletin. And we hazard a little guess that Mr. Daugherty was not himself the originator of the idea of boosting Hampton on an alleged religious leaflet. W.e would be rather inclined to believe that the suggestion came from some Hampton press agent. We don’t know whether or not this guess is correct, but Mr. Daugherty knows.