Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 236, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 October 1914 — PLAYING POLITICS IS GOVERNOR RALSTON [ARTICLE]

PLAYING POLITICS IS GOVERNOR RALSTON

Indianapolis News Correspondent Scores Governor For Appointment of Taggart Henchmen. William H. Blodgett, writing in the Indianapolis News, “touches up” the governor’s recent appointment of C. E. Talkington as superintendent of the state’s new penal farm at Putnamville. The following is taken from a lengthy article by Mr. Blodgett, published in Friday’s Indianapolis News, under a Columbus, Ind., date line: , “One of the most solemn pledges that Samuel -M. Ralston made before he was nominated sor r governor was that he would not permit the dirty hand of politics to be laid on any of the state charitable and penal institutions. He repeated that pledge after he was nominated for governor and reiterated it when he became governor. “And yet he has placed in charge of the state penal farm not only a politician, but a machine politician, a ward of the Crawford FairbanksTom Taggart machine, a friend, supporter and associate of Homer L. Cook and a man who has acted as a stall for, the machine. And the penal farm is a state institution. The man at the head of it has every chance to A play politics. And the man at the head of it should be a man who understands at least the rudiments* of penal work. “In extenuation of Governor Ralston’s offense it is but just to say that when he made these pledges he was sincere. He really believed that he would be governor in fact. To be sure, he knew that the Crawford Fairbanks-Tom Taggart machine and its brewery alliances got him his nomination and he was so unsophisticated as to imagine for a short time that it would not- demand its iwund of flesh when once he got into a position where he could serve it. This is a charitable view that the hundreds of thousands of people in Indiana who desire that politics be kept out of the state institutions will take of the governor’s action in appointing Charles E. Talkington, of this city, superintendent of the penal farm. ‘The appointment came as a greas surprise to the majority of the people here and with one accord the announcement was made about the court house and in places where the politicians gather: ‘Well, that’s Tom Taggart’s appointment.’ ”