Jasper County Democrat, Volume 9, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 August 1906 — GOV. HANLY’S ENFORCING THE LAWS. [ARTICLE]

GOV. HANLY’S ENFORCING THE LAWS.

Of course no reasonable man can expect that the governor of a great state can see everything that is going on all over his bailiwick all of the time —at least at all places at all times —but when a prize fight is advertisee for several weeks in advanse in all the daily papers of the country, to be pulled off right in hie own home city—the capital is the sole topic of the sporting fraternity of bis own and neighboring cities for days prior to the event —one must conclude that the governor of the commonwealth of that state must have been aware of the contemplated fight. We refer to the Herman-Yanger fight at Indianapolis last Friday night and to our own J. Frank Hanly as the non-interierring governor. True, prize-fighting is not onehalf as brutal or as bad as .football, yet the former is under the ban of the law while the latter, unfortunately, is still permitted, and this fight was pulled off on Indiana soil, right in the front yard of our law-enforcing (?) governor, figuratively speaking, because it would not be permitted in other states whose governors are not accredited with the degree of self-laudation on law-enforcement that our own J. Frank Hanly assumes. The Democrat believes in lawenforcement —in fact as well as in theory—but it believes also when one man and that man in a position where he can do much in this line—starts out to enforce the laws, and in his lectures at the Chautauquae heaps great bunches of laudation upon himself for enforcing them, it "believes the laws should be enforced at Indianapols as well as in Hammond, Michigan City or Terre Haute, or even French Lick and West Baden, What is permitted and sanctioned at Indianapolis or certain other places should not be frowned upon elsewhere in the state. If Governor Hanly were sincere in his protestations for law enforcement he would not have permitted a prize fight to be pulled off in Indianapolis, and he would compel the officers of Lake county to "put on the lid” at Cedar Lake and other places, where scores of slot machines are in operation all the time and where, at the Lake especially, enough booze is sold openly every Sunday to float a battle-ship. Governor Hanly’s antics remind us of the sham battles that took place at Ft. Benjamin Harrison last week.