Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 289, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 December 1914 — NO LAW TO PUNISH FALSE BOX MEN [ARTICLE]

NO LAW TO PUNISH FALSE BOX MEN

Guilty Clerks and Officers Escape Because Grand Jury Finds No Law Covering Casa

You can’t beat a crook if he has the backing of the right kind ol 1 people. This is preliminary to saying that those who were responsible for several bills being incorporated into the published statutes of 1913 will go scot free and con now blow about their shrewdness, all because the grand jury has decided that there is no law to cover the act. That it was a moral wrong and stamps the men responsible as crooks and grafters is generally agreed but there is no law on the books of Indiana that provide any punishment It is'a strange thing that there is no general law that would handle these men for malfeasance in office, but it is so reported and thus is Hoosierdom made a great joke by the men who should he devoting their time to making it one of the greatest states in the union. On top of that disgrace is the present plight in which LieutenantGovernor O’Neill and Secretary of State Homer L. Oook and eleven other officials find themselves as defendants in a graft case. It is the plan of the indicted men to force a test case, probably that of O’Neill, to immediate trial, before the democratic judge loses his seat. An array of legal talent has been procured and an effort will be made to have the cases thrown out on a technicality, thus thwarting justice, protecting the men who have been responsible for the disgrace to the state and who have brought shame on the democratic party of Indiana. A real wide awake grafter is as hard to catch as a red fox and when the pursuers are not trying there is a fine chance for Rie decent people to get it in the neck. With -Corner L. Oook, the last speaker of the house and the new secretary of state being accused of khowledge if ! not direct responsibility for some of the measures that had been indefinitely postponed getting into the laws-of the state and with the charge that he had written a letter asking “what it was worth” to have a certain text book adopted*- and now with sixteen graft indictments against him, it certainly appears that old Hoosierdom is in hands that are not going to do anything for the public welfare. The sooner Indiana gets a change of administration the sooner will the grand old state regain its standing in the country. A dispatch from Indianapolis says that Tom Taggart, democratic boss, was very active at a meeting of the accused men held Sunday at the Dennison hotel. There are thousands upon thousands of democrats in Indiana who are heart sick at the conduct of the men who have beer, entrusted to office in Indiana and who will refuse to support for office any of the gang who wear the Taggart-Fair-banks-Donn .Roberts stripe. And with, all the exposure to think that Roberts, mayor of Terre Haute, where graft Is so pronounced that it smells all oyer the state, is a candidate for governor; it Is enough to make a man shake off the shackles of party and announce that henceforth he will be a freeman and vote for men, not .roosters.