Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 297, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 December 1919 — TO NAME TICKET EARLY IN JUNE [ARTICLE]

TO NAME TICKET EARLY IN JUNE

CHICAGO SELECTED AS PLACE FOR G. O. P. CONVENTION IN. JUNE, 1920. Washington, Deci 10.—The republican national committee today selected Chicago and Tuesday, June Bth, as the place and time for the national convention at which the party's 1920 candidate for president will be nominated. On the roll call Chicago mustered 44 votes to nine for St. Louis, whose boosters had made a stubborn fight for the honor. The choice of the convention date was unanimous. The committee also authorized the creation of two new departments of party organization to deal respectively with policies and general party welfare. The former, composed of selected members of the committee and the other of men and women representing labor, capital,, farmers and others, will go to work at once sorting out subjects to be dealt with in the 1920 campaign. The plan of Will H. Hays, the national chairman, for limitation of individual campaign contributions to SI,OOO, formally was approved. After hearing the report of Chairman Hays and adopting a resolution approving his efforts for party organization and harmony, the committee ended its session and many of the republican leaders, who had come to Washington for the gathering, left for their homes. Despite the committee meeting today the maneuvering of the friends of various candidates was conspicuously in evidence, but the only result appearing on the surface was a statement by Senator James E. Watson, of Indiana, declaring he was not seeking the nomination and would not permit any personal ambition to interfere with party harmony. During the past few days, a movement in his favor has been actively promoted. Senator Watson’s statement follows :

“This statement is made for the purpose of defining my position with reference to the republican nomination for the presidency. “Not at any time have I Seen a candidate for this place, having repeatedly declined to permit the use of my name, but many of my friends in Indiana, and in other states, have insisted on my becoming a candidate, and I feel that I should definitely say that I am not seeking the presidency; that I shall not become a candidate, either actively or passively, and that my sole political ambition is to succeed myself as senator from Indiana. “I cannot but decline to enter into any factional strife in my own state. The future of our country is too perilous and fraught with too many dangers and the Republican party is too great an agency for their proper solution to permit one who believes in that party, as I do, to be the cause of serious differences in our own ranks. “I will not permit any personal ambition of mine to interfere, with the harmony that pervades the ranks of my party at this critical time—a harmony that I believe to be essential to the welfare of our country, and for that reason, I decline to permit the use of my name as a candidate for the nomination as president.”