Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 January 1916 — Vandalia Men Boost McCray. [ARTICLE]

Vandalia Men Boost McCray.

Terre Haute Spectator. Tom Perkins, veteran Vandalia railroad conductor, is -at the top of the list of enthusiastic workers for the nomination of Warren T. McCray for governor of Indiana. f The story of Mr. Perkins conversion is an interesting one and is best told in his own wotds. “John L. Beckner and I have been ■working together for twenty-one years,” says Mr. Perkins. “He is baggageman on my train, and after these many years we think a great deal of each other. One day Beckner read in a newspaper that Warren T. McCray, of Kentland, would be a candidate for governor. This started him going. He told me of Mr. McCray starting in the grocery business when he was just twenty-one years old, which was before he became a farmer. “Mr. Beckner, whose father was a minister, then lived in Kentland. He was Mr. McCray’s first employe. As a youngster in short pants, Mr. Becker got his first job delivering groceries in a wheelbarrow. “ ‘Tom, that map MlCray is the finest man I ever knew,’ Mr. Beckner told, me. ‘lt has been thirty odd #ears since I worked for him and he really was only a boy in years, but he had a wonderful character even then. His word was as good as his bond. He was -straight, industrious and had a splendid mind and a personality that drew men to him. I never worked for as fine a man, or a man that I respected more. From others I know he has remained just what he was when he was twenty-one years old. Tom, I want you to vote for McCray.’ “1 had know-n Mr. Beckner hong enough to know he doesn’t go off half-, cocked. When he had so many good things to say about a man he had worked for and had knoWn more than a quarter of a century, I told him that was just the kind of a man that Indiana needed for governor, and that I would vote for McCray. “Well, Mr. Beckner wrote a letter to Mr. McCray and suggested that he write me or send some of his campaign literature. Mr. McCray wrote me a personal letter and I answered it. The first time I met him was when he came to Terre Haute. “Mr. McCray has measured up to everything my old friend Beckner said of him. I am first, last and all the time for Warren T. McCray for governor of Indiana. “He is straight. He is not a machine politician . He is a businessman. He is a man of exemplary personal habits. He is tolerant. He has a fine personality. He has made a success of his own business. He will make a success of conducting the business of the state of Indiana.”