Muncie Post-Democrat, Muncie, Delaware County, 3 June 1926 — Page 2

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THE POST-DEMOCRAT

THURSDAY, JUNE 3, 1926.

THE POST-DEMOCRAT Democratic weekly newspaper representing the Democrats of Muncie, Delaware County and the Sth Congressional District. The only Democratic Newspaper tn Delaware County.

Entered as second class matter January 15, 1821, at the Postoifice at Muncie, Indiana, under the Act of March 3, 1879.

PRICE 5 CENTS—$2.00 A YEAR.

Office 306 East Jackson Street—Opposite Public Library. GEORGE R. DALE, Owner and Publisher.

Phone 2540

Muncie, Indiana, Thursday, June 3, 1923.

SHERWOOD AND THE ELAN

Dr. Henry Noble Sherwood, superintendent of pub-

lic instruction, was badly defeated tor renomination in the recent republican state convention. This is the first time in twenty-five years that a man holding that two-

year office was defeated for renomination.

chine politicians in the so-called representative selections by party conventions was cleany demonstrated m the decent republican state convention fo be the proper method of naming candidates. In the recent primary held in Delawa r e county the republican machine candidates were defeated in almost every instance, yet, by manipulation and unfair mehtoGs the machine held -control of the party organ-

ization.

Of the thirty-four delegates to the state convention, eighteen were claimed by the machine crowd and sixteen by those opposed to the machine, yet, when the delegates were rounded up by the machinists at Indianapolis, ten of the sixteen who were supposed to be favorable to the anti-Billy Williams crowd, voted with the machine in every test vote in the convention. The principal test came in the vote for candidate

cn. f uc - Le - u J-ur renoimnauon. > The principal test came in the vote for candidate bnerwood was one of the original Hoosier kluxers for the supreme court, when twenty-eight Delaware

and was a devoted follower of D. C. Stephenson, the i ^

their own particular end. They are partisans of one idea, one law and one moral. In order to establish Volsteadian prohibition, Mr. Wheeler, Mr. McBride, Dr. Shumaker, and their associates would be willing to dash to pieces the entire Bill of Rights. So we find ourselves wholly unimpressed by their talk about the “Constitutionality” of the referendum, or of anything else. * * * When the leaguists claim that the drys would not vote, they do no more than indulge in a contemptible whine. Of course drys would vote. They always have i voted—in great force—and if they hadn’t voted, there would be no problem of Volsteadian prohibition confronting the American people today. As a matter of fact, it may be tiue (though we do not believe it now) that, on any such nation-wide referendum as is proposed, the drys would win smashing victories all along the line. But we’d like to have a show-down.

former grand dragon, who is now in prison for life

for the murder of a woman.

His disastrous defeat is a clear demonstration of the waning power of the klan in Hoosier republican pcnucs. In 1922 and 1924 the klan ruled the republican party with a rod of iron, and no man could obtain an office unless he had qualified by joining the organization. Outside of his klan foolishness, however, Sherwood had some good ideas. He was especially friendly to the Ball teachers’ college here and had courage enough to oppose the antiquated township tru&tee system and stand for a centralized system of school control which would take the country, schools out of the hands of the trustees, nine-tenths of whom are unfit to handle educ-

ational matters.

The average trustee hires teachers for political or family reasons and their power to purchase supplies and employ their neighbors on road work gives them considerable political power. The trustees of the state have an organization of their own. They weild a mighty dub in state conventions and always maintain a lobby at Indianapolis when the legislature is in session. Sherwood was unable to withstand the unjust opposition of the trustees organization, but at that he would have won if he had not been tainted with the klan stigma. The klan was a grand little stepping stone for ambitious office seekers during its hectic period of hysteria and emotional insanity, but this is the morning after t he night before, and men in every section of the state who took- office through the klan influence, are being repudiated at the polls and in convention. The klan was a sort of a Christmas tree for discredited politicians who grabbed at the K. K. K. straw to keep themselves in office a short time longer and was also a glorious opportunity for people of little consequence to break into the political game and bask briefly in the sun of official prominence. Outstanding in the former class is senator James Eli Watson, who had shot his wad and saw that the only way to keep in line with the klan republican state organization was to join the kluxers and play ball with the imperial wizard. Outstanding in the latter class is Senator Arthur R. Robinson, who would never have been thought of for senator, except for his close connection with D. C. Stephenson, for three years “the law” in Indiana, until the real law finally got him. Congressman Updike, of Indianapolis, Congressman Hall of Marion and Congressman Noble Johnson of the fifth district, are three more unknowns who rode to office on the klan goat and ail three will be defeated by democrats in the fall election. Congressman Albert Vestal, another Opportunist of the Watson type, joined the klan prior to the election of 1924 and scratched through because of the klan endorsement, but the hour has struck for Albert. The klan is destined to be the downfall of polticians, reachers and business men who used to for their own advancement. It served temporarily to make them intensely popular with the dupes who paid ten dollars a head to become American citizens 1 , but the suckers have finally become wise and are in the mood to punish those who made monkeys out of them. Two years ago Henry Noble Sherwood would not have been thought of in connection with the office of superintendent of public instruction had it not been that the klan was then a howling political success and the klan needed a hundred percenter who regarded a flag on the little red school house more important than the cause of education. Shedwood basked b r ieHy in the limelight and has* now been passed on to political oblivion, humiliated by the thought of republication before his first terfri office

came to a close.

In Delaware county, Prosecuted V^nOgle, elected by the klan, was utterly wiped out in the recent primary, many of the votes against him being cast by klansmen and klanswomen, who finally discovered the feet of clay sticking out beneath the lily white nightshirt

he wore in klan parades.

Indianapolis has had its stomach full of Klu^Kluxism. The civil and school city of Indianapolis is not being administered officially by a bunch of klan pondescripts. Muncie and Anderson are the laughing stock of the state because of ther iklan administrations. Sensible people are getting their wits together and will refuse here after to entrust public business in the hands of those responsible for the vicious klan program in Incli- * Tia Those who joined the klan and hlped persecute all who dared to oppose its program of hate, for purely political reasons, who lost their prestige.. Those who were duped into joining because of the high sounding phrases of their crooked leaders, are forgiven and their temporary obsession forgotten, but the men who placed principle behind them and helped sow discord, malice, murder, oppression and hate for money and office will

never recover their standing.

The klan rots and corrodes all that • it touches. Those who used it and trod in the faces of their fellow townsmen to advance their own interests will go

their graves unhonored and unsung.

delegates, headed by Billy Williams and Harry Hoff man, voted for Samuel Artman, the candidate of the anti-saloon league and other special interests, while only six votes, headed by Cal b iris, w^ere cast for

Clarence Martin, the successful candidate.

It is natural that the republican party, the party of special interests, should favo r the repeal of the primary election law. If the recent successful candidates who knocked Billy Wiliams and his crowd into a cocked hat had been compelled to tell their chances in a delegate convention they would have had no more chance

than a rabbit in a flock of greyhounds.

If the primary law is to be amended at all it should be strengthened instead of weakened. We should have the ‘open balot,” containing the names of all candidates, democrat and republican, and the voters should be allowed to go to the polls without being embrassed by declaring their political affiliations and run the risk of being challenged and insulted by ward heelers. And instea dof lessing the number of candidates to be voted for in the primaries 1 , e v ery candidate for state office, as well as those running for the lesser offices, should be voted for by the people, and not by

state conventions rigged up by political bosses.

The average delegates to a republican state convention has little or nothing to say about the nominations. They are usually voted like sheep by some political bell weather and ordinarily do not even know how their vote is to be cast in the convention until some hand picked boss, speaking for his county delegation, arises in the convention and casts the entire vote of his county. About the only privilege accorded the rank and file of delegates is to wear an important looping badge and get a seat on the convention floor, where he sits in a daze until it is all over and the convention has nominated somebody he doesn’t want nominated, with the

help of his own vote, cast by the county boss.

This is written two days before the democratic state convention. We sincerely hope that the demoertic reactionaries will not follow the example of the republican reactionaries who seek to destroy the primary election law. If, by some chance, the deiTiG^ati’e convention should be foolish enought to strike a blow at the primary, it would set the democratic party back twenty

years.

It is true that there are many abuses of the primary, and many do not vote, yet the people will resent and bi-partisan effort to disfranchise them. Those who do not vote in primaries* regard the privi’ege highly. Van Ogle and other machine candidates would have been nominated if it had been left to a convention.

MICHIGAN KLAN CHIEF CONFESSES TO SENDING BOMB Order Planned Death To AH Who Oppose It; Statement Being W ithheld.

WHY THEY ARE RUNNING AWAY. F. Scott McBride, general superintendent of the Anti-Saloon league, announces that the league will resist to the limit of its strength every effort to conduct a referendum on the Volstead law, in every state where such effort may be made. Such an attitude as that will give more of encouragement than of dismay ^to the modificationists for it will indicate the drawing of a conclusion to the effect that the Anti-Saloon league a referendum because it fears the result of a straight-out test of strength, or a clean-cut test of public sentiment on the question at issue. 1 * * * When American newspapers recently took a poll of the prohibition sentiment, the move was denounced by spokesmen of the Anti-Saloon, league as “wet propaganda.” But there is a very considerable and a thoroughly honest difference of opinion as to that. A referendum on the simple question of modification or no modification. stripped of all complicating side issues, would show how the people of any state who are interested in this subject really feel about it. One might reasonably conclude and confidently expect that every person, whether he be “wet” or “dry” would wish to have that information and would be anxious for the public to have it, too. It might, and probably would, go far toward shaping a comprehensive national policy which would be in conformity with popular preference and, as is so often said, successful and effective law can be no more than crystalized public sentiment. Consent makes the law. * * * If public sentiment, in sufficient volume and degree, supports a law, then that law will be reasonably well enforced. Otherwise, the law is certain, by the very nature of things, to fall into a certain contempt, and, having fallen into contempt, to generate a corruptive and destructive poison which spreads into the public’s attitude toward other laws. So a number of state referendums, or, better still, a national referendum, would throw helpful light on a very important and a very vexed question.

YOUTH HAS ITS INNINGS. The naming of E. Earl Peters as chairma:: of the democratic state central committee and the triumph of Albert Stump, who won the nomination for senator, marks the beginning of a new era in democratic politics in the state of Indiana. The ancients of the party must relinquish the seepter and tell the “boys” to go to it. It is fitting that this should be as it is. Youth should not be denied. Age relinquishes with reluctance the pomp anfl power of political domination, but such grand and sterling democrats as. Taggart, Cullop, Simms and dozens of others we might name, should remember their own experiences. They were young themselves once and they remember the fierce political battles in their more youthful days when they fought themselves to dislodge their elders and instill their party with the fiery blood of youth. The most inspiring spec table .ever staged in a democratic convention in the state of Indiana was that of the young conqueror, Albert Stump, standing on the stage in Tomlinson Hall between Tom Taggart and Joe Cravans and the graceful act of the veteran Taggart in holding aloft the hand of the young man who had fought his way to the nomination for United States senator, winning by sheer pluck and energy without the help of any of the time honored leaders. The graceful surrender of active leadership to the younger generation was fitting and proper. Indiana has had honest leadership, but in recent years the party has suffered through the failure of new blood to gain a foothold in the management and organization. Nobody can blame the “old fellows” for remaining at the helm as long as possible. It was but natural, but age must inevitably hand the scepter to its sons some time or other. Indiana democracy will now march to victory, with youth as the standard bearer, supported by the advice and wisdom of the elders. Albert Stump is the very man to end the political career of Jim Watson, who has grown old in the service of his masters, those interests which lurk in the lobby of the senate chamber seeking special legislative favors. Mr. Stump made an individual fight in the primary campaign. He was unaided by. any known political leader and the newspapers gave him but slight mention. The four candidates opposing him, Cullop, Rauch, Frederick and Slack were names familiar to all. Stump was practically unknown, yet with all these candidates he ran a close second in the primary vote. If he was unable to overcome such a tremendous handicap in the primary, through his. oven unaided efforts, what will he do to Jim Watson in the finals?

Muskegon, Mich., June 1—A confession revealing how a jealous, young Ku Klux Klan chieftain made and mailed a bomb which killed bis political rival, August Krubaech. Krubaech’s 18-year-old daughter and William Pranke, her finace is expected to be announced by authorities here today. While the funeral cortege was filing away from the Elks temple with the three victims Sunday afternoon, Ira K. Bartleet, 28-year-old klan leader of Blue Lake township, was understood to have been in the police station a few blocks away signing the confession. “I did it to kill Supervisor Krubaech, who was running the township,” Bartlett is quoted as saying. “I didn’t like him and decided that it was the only way to get him out of office.” * , Details of the alleged confession covering several pages are locked in the safe at the county jail and will not be made public until Tuesday, Sheriff Co veil announced. Bartlett is understood to have made the confession only on the condition that it be kept secret for several days. When questioned about the alleged confeccion, authorities would make no definite assertion, saying that were bound to secrecy. However, they said an important statement would be forthcomng today. They intimated that Bartlet had not made a clean breast of the affair and that startling new developments were likely to be brought out before Bartlett was brought into court.

But, say the leaders of the Anti-Saloon league, a referendum would be unconstitutional, in the face of the fact that many Constitutional lawyers of the greatest eminence, including Elihu Root (who is credited with .having framed the statement of the Question to be subto 'mitted to the electorate of New York) stand in sharp I diasgreement with the league leaders on that score. And, as for that, the league captains care not a tup-

I FD TO KNOW * pence for the Constitutionality of any course so long as ThP nnnnlar vA pc U,* nv'— v it gives appearance of serving their purpose. Theirs is election, comparedwith theTecret manipulations of ma- doctnne that any means whatever is justified by

A GAGGED CONVENTION. The fear of the little group of bosses who are running the Republican convention, of any disclosures or exposures, is reflected in the rule that no resolution can be presented by any delegate from the floor of the con-

vention.

These bosses thoroughly understand that there is a deep protest on the part of large numbers, who usually vote the Republican ticket against conditions at the Statehouse and especially against the present party management. They know that there are delegates in that convention who would like to insist that the party management be taken from the hands of men who have an eye upon the gigantic highway fund. They know that there is a group of editors in this state, editors of Republican papers, who are so disgusted with present conditions that they will no longer turn over their columns to these bosses; editors who. refuse to wear collars and become the servile mouthpieces of interests which are using their party to prey upon their

readers.

They know that there are brave men and women in that convention who would welcome a chance to take into the open many matters which the carefully handpicked committees named by Chairman Walb will not consider or indorse. So they have applied the old gag rule which silences the delegate and makes protest or progress impossible. The action is in itself complete evidence of the condition in party affairs which these editors have vainly tried to correct and against which they are protesting. What subject did Chairman Walb fear would be brought to the floor of that convention ? What matter of policy did his bosses feel must be kept away from the delegates who are sent to represent their neighbors and friends? Why was it necessary to put muzzles upon the delegates and bar them from presenting any matter that has to do with either matters of government or party control? What story will these delegates tell when they go back to their homes and tell those who sent them that the convention was steam-rollered and gagged? What must be hidden from public view and from the family gathering of the party itself? That action takes away all semblance of a convention. It becomes a gathering of men and women who become spectators of the scene, unable to speak unless given leave by those in command. Will they go home and say that they have been at a convention of their party or merely onlookers as a staged farce, where puppets obey the pulling of secret strings and only those who are ready to stand for all that these bosses want have a part?—Indianapolis

Times.

SOO-MiLEMCE WON BY LOCKHART; HALTED BY RAIN California Boy Annexes Title and Wins Sum of $40,000.00.

Indianapolis Spe€dway, June 1 — Frank Lockhart in a Miller Special won the automobile race at the speedway yesterday. The race was called at 400 miles. Harry Hartz, in a Miller, was second, and Cliff Woodbury, in a Boyle Special, was third. Lockhart’s time for the 400 miles was 4:13:37.78, an average of 94.63 miles an hour. Fred lOomer, in a Miller Special, was fourth ,and Peter DePaolo, winn ar_ofthe-1.925-jace-yras ifth. /- Duesenberg Special. Lockhart won about $40,000 as the result of his victory. He rode the entire distance without relief, stopping only once at the pits. Frank Elliott, in a Miller, was sixth. Norman Batten, in a Miller, was seventh. Ralph Hepburn, in a Miller was eighth. Fred Lecklider, driving Phil Shafer’s Miller, was ninth, and John Duff, driving an Blear Special, was tenth. The race was called without warning at 400 miles when another fall of rain again made the track slippery.

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HOUND DOGS ARE POPULARINSOUTH Arkansas Farmers Have Lucrative Business In Raising These Pups.

Evening Shade, Ark.—Time was when the presence of a flock of ’hound dogs around the cabin of an Arkansas countryman was regarded as a sure sign of shiftlessness and that the farmer was “triflin’.” Today, however, this has changed. For the ‘houn dog made famous in song and history has become the means of a surer prosperity for its raiser than corn or cotton. The hogs may run wild without care, but the dog gets the best If you travel through the Ozark hills and hear the booming voices of a group of hounds you may conclude that some dog owner is plying his trade of training hounds for the market. And a good pair of hounds will pay their keep within a few days through the fur they will capture. The market for hounds is active locally. This ad appeared recently: “Now is your chaice to get a hound pup from the famotis ‘Old Bell’ dog of mine. Old Bell took 11 coons • seven possums and a mink in three nights last fall. Can trail and tree any varmint that ever ran on four legs.”

Poland Elects New President

Warsaw, Poland, June 2. Poland has a new President, but Marshal Pilsudski for the present remains master of the country. Prof. Ignatz Moscicki, a teacher of chemistry, now nominally holds the executive power. He has never been politically prominent and yesterday informed the Associated Press cor respondent that the presidency had been “wished on” him, while he was merely passing through Warsaw from the Hague to Emberg, and averred that he was not even equipped with the necessary dress clothes for the occasion. Therefore, he explained, it had become necessary to postpone arrangements for his induction into office until Friday noon.

The roar of Niagara Falls has been measured and found to be noisier than New York’s busiest corner. The statute of the premier, Kemai Pasha, whch is soon to be set up in Constantinople, will be the first statute of a Mohammedan ever

erected in Turkey.