Jasper County Democrat, Volume 9, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 November 1906 — Page 2

KERN’S BRILLIANT SPEECH

Stinging Arraignment of a Pretender and His Party. Few speeches delivered in Indiana have aroused as great public Interest as that of Hon. John W. Kern at Tipton, in which city Governor Hanly opened the campaign for the Republicans. Mr. Kern’s thorough knowledge of state issues and of the fraudulent pretensions of the chief spokesman for the Republican machine-tick-et enabled him to make one of the most forceful and convincing arguments ever heard in the state. Below are given excerpts from his speech which are of special Interest in view of the egotistical and “holier-than-thou” attitude which Governor Hanly has assumed before the voters of the state:

Hanly's Weakness at the Polls. One word more regarding Hanly's reference to myself: Like a great magnanimous statesman, and with a dignity Inseparable from greatness, he takes great satisfaction in speaking of me as the leader of forlorn hopes, referring to the fact that I was unsuccessful <u my candidacy against him.

While I accepted the Democratic nomination for Governor when it was tendered me by a unanimous vote In convention, much against my will, being reasonably certain that jny party could not carry the state, and while the defeat of the Democracy In state and nation was overwhelming, yet I have no regrets that I made the race, for there were some features of the election returns which gave me great satisfaction. Notwithstanding the fact that the election laws of Indiana are such that every Republican who voted for me had to step In the election booth and make thirty-five cross marks upon his ticket and run the risk of losing his vote there was a sufficient number' of Republicans who voted for me to make Hanly’s plurality in Indiana nearly 10,000 votes less than Roosevelt’s and about 3,750 votes less than Dave Sherrick’s.

It was especially gratifying to that in Marlon county, where I hart lived for twenty-one years, Mr. Hanly’s plurality was over 2,000 less than that of Roosevelt and 1,000 less than that of Dan Storms, while Tippecanoe county, where Mr. Hanly’s sterling qualities are better known than elsewhere, his plurality was 628 less than that of Dan Storms.

In Howard county, where I was born and raised, although 1 have not resided there for over twenty years, the plurality for Hanly was nearly 300 less than that of Roosevelt and 150 less than that of Storms, while in Warren county, where he was born and raised Hanly fell behind the national ticket 182 votes and eightyone behind Storms.

I want to assure Mr. Hanly, and all concerned, that I would rather lead a forlorn hope and make a losing race with the solid support of my own party and such an expression of confidence from so many of the opposition than to trail into an office at the tail of my ticket, holding on to the coattails of more popular and better men, and that I arm much better satisfied with my present position, paying my own telephone, gas, coal and water bills, than I would be if I were in the governor’s chair and sponging these necessaries of life off the taxpayers of Indiana in violation of the plain letter of the law. Borrowing from Sherrick. But there is one matter concerning the Sherrick case referred to by Mr. Ralston —a vita! matter—one about which the public has a right to full information concerning which Mr. Hanly is as silent as the grave. That is as.to whether J. Frank Hanly was one of the recipients of the vast sum of the state’s money, which David E. Sherrick was scattering to the winds during his term of office Mr.' Ralston charged that “the record in the Sherrick case, now pending in the supreme court, shows that tn 1904 Hanly got at one time $250 and at another time |SOO belonging to the state from Sherrick as auditor, and that he didn’t repay the state until after the exposures came—late in 1905.” It was one of the most serious of Ralston's charges. If Mr. Hanly was not one of the great flock of vultures who took advantage of poor Dave Sherrick's generosity and coaxed out of him the public money in his custody, he should make that fact known without delay. Sherrick's many friends would be glad to know who were and who were not responsible for his downfall.

Was this $750 of the state's money borrowed by Mr. Hanly on the eve of the state convention at which he was nominated for governor’ If so, was It used in connection with the convention’ It is openly changed by Republicans in Marion county that this money was to be used and was used in “breaking" the delegation from that county to the state convention, which Was selected to give solid support to William L. Taylor.. If the governor denies this, then the controversy on that point is between Republican*. and the public at large may not be vitally interested, but it is of Interest to the taxpayers as to who were the men who preyed upon Sherrick and borrowed the state's money

from an unfortunate creature, weak in mind and body, without the power, mental or moral, to resist their Importunities. The Matter of “House Rent." On the subject of house rent the governor, true to his course of argument, begs the question and seeks to Justify by false pretense. He undertakes to convey the Idea that he has followed precedents set by those honorable and high-minded men, James A. Mount and Claude Matthews. Why he should want to follow any precedent set by them, after finding them so derelict of duty In other particulars as he claims, It Is difficult to understand. But let us look at the facts.

The first appropriation for governor's house rent, which I am able to find in the statutes, during Governor Matthew’s administration was in 1895, less than a year before the expiration of his term. Governor Matthews was allowed at the rate of S6OO for a part of the last year of his services. During Governor Mount’s term he received the same amount—the amount necessary to pay the rent of a house suitable for the occupancy of such modest, old-fashioned governors as they. Their salary was $5,000 per annum.

What parallel can Mr. Hanly draw between their conduct and his? Did Matthews or Mount use their money to pay their light bills or fuel bills, or other bills, for supplies necessary to their personal comfort? It Is a foul slander upon the memory of these honored sons of Indiana that they or either of them ever engaged In such despicable practice. The legislature, with knowledge that the rental value of a suitable house was S6OO, appropriated that sum for house rent, and Matthews and Mount, being plain, blunt, honest men, asked for no more.

During Governor Durbin’s administration the appropriation for bouse rent was increased to SI,BOO, but a bill was Introduced Increasing the governor’s salary to SB,OOO per annum, one of the chief arguments in its favor being that such raise in the salary would obviate the necessity of any further appropriation for house rent.

Mr. Hanly was the first beneficiary of the Increased salary, but although he posed throughout his campaign as a child of poverty and the “poor man’s friend,” he was not satisfied with the salary, and the SI,BOO appropriation for house rent was continued.

The legislature of 1903 had appropriated “for the rent of the governor’s residence, etc., $1,800." The et cetera might cover a multitude of objects. But the legislature of 1905 made the appropriation for house rent and nothing else. During the first few months of his administration Hanly rented no house. He did not see fit to place himself in a position where he would be legally entitled to the house rent appropriation, but he proceeded by his own confession to draw the money with which he presumably paid the rtfnt of a house. This eminent lawyer says he thought he was entitled to it, although he was paying no house rent at all. He proceeded along that line until the explosion in the Sherrick case. He then comes to the conclusion that the words “house rent” are so obscure in meaning and so difficult to comprehend, that he must have the opinion of his attorney general as to their meaning. A remarkable situation.

We have Governor Hanly in his Tipton speech arguing the law governing the Daily and Henderson cases in the presence of the judges who are to pass upon them with learning so profound as to startle not only the judges, but. the bystanders. And yet this learned constitutional lawyer, in October. 1905, did not know’.the meaning of the words "house rent.”

Did any one of you farmers in Tipton county ever pay a lawyer a fee to tell you what was meant by the words "house rent”? Did any of you lawyers ever receive a fee for explaining the legal meaning of those mystic words?

It was left to your reform governor, the great apostle of civic righteousness, to solve this mystery. He propounds to the genial Charley Miller, attorney general, questions tn substance like these:

Is anthracite coal at $8 per ton house rent? Is coal oil house rent? Is stove wood house rent? Is gas house rent? Is a telephone house rent? The Reign of Terror. Now remember tne circumstances under which these questions were asked. Hanly had just broken loose as a reformer. He was striding through the corridors of the statehouse like a colossus, breathing words that Implied destruction to all its inmates. Rumors were rife that charges were to be laid at the doors of nearly all the state officials. There was a reign of terror.

So when the governor asked Charley Miller It coal wasn’t house rent, and whether house rent meant coal oil, stove wood, the attorney general, trembling in his boots before his stern and implacable master, promptly answered: "Yea. verily, your Excellency, all these things are house rent.” My judgment is that the attorney general would just as cheerfully have certified that typhoid fever, or seneca snake root, or peruna, or any other imaginable thing would pass current for house rent if the governor wanted It to. And his opinion to that effect would have been just as good law and better common sense.

And so this man. who parades his own name alongside those of Folk and LaFollette, presents bills amounting to $278.54 for two telephones in his house, for repairs to a house for which he claims to pay SBS per month, for gas, for lighting anij heating, and for

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twenty tons oT anthracite coal, and takes money out of the state treasury appropriated for the payment of house rent. Let us look for a moment at some of these bills:

Under the head of “Repairs” we find the following charges: Lily & Stalnaker, window guard... 54.75 Herrington Light Co., inverted lamps 4.20 Herrington Light Co., Inverted lamps 9.00

These Inverted lamps were doubtless purchased for the use of the learned attorney general while he was writing that opinion to the effect that twenty tons of anthracite coal was house rent. A new kind of light was needed for the proper solution of that question, and as it was an inverted opinion that was wanted, an Inverted light was eminently appropriate. But to continue: Gas for Light and Heat. January 6 $17.10 January 8.01 January 9.09 February 15.21 March 11.52 April 9.27 May 6.12 June 4.77

Making a total gas bill for the six months $81.09 How that gas meter worked overtime in the month of January! But to go on! Oct. 2, 1905, J. D. Busby, ten tons anthracite coel $72.50 Feb. 14, 1906, Indianapolis Mortar and Fuel Company 82.50 Total ....$155.00 Poor Mr. Busby doubtless thought he was selling and delivering coal. But he was mistaken. The black stuff he was hauling and dumping into the executive basement was house rent, for did not the attorney general of the state so decide, as a proposition of cold, unvarnished law? These are samples of the kind of house rent for which the legislature appropriated your money. It is not necessary to go further. The attorney general in his opinion says:

"This appropriation can be properly used to provide a home in a habitable condition for the chief executive, and this would include necessary light, heat and water as w'ell as repairs for the comfort of the chief executive and his family.” A house without a carpet or window blinds, and curtains, tables and chairs would not be haoitable tor a executive, and he is entitled to all these under the head of house rent, if house rent means everything needed about the house “for the comfort of the chief executive and his family." But enough of this sickening business! Imagine Joseph W. Folk or Robert M. LaFollette or William J. Bryan or Theodore Roosevelt engaging in this business of petty grafting. The credit of devising his contemptible scheme for a small graft belongs exclusively to the man who talks incessantly of civic righteousness and of his own moral superiority over his fellow men and his attorney general. Honest Injun, gentlemen, don’t you think that such a graft beats the spots off the pluto poker chip, which the governor is holding aloft throughout the state as one of his stock and standing arguments? * Railroad Commission Bill. I will not quarrel with the governor as to who is entitled to credit for the enactment of the state railroad commission bill, which became a law at the last session of the legislature, after it had received the approval of the railroad lawyers of Indiana. I am claiming no part of such credit, for I was only attorney for the shippers—and an attorney to help shape the bill and to make Argument in its favor before the legislative committee. I declined to lobby for that or any other measure.

But the governor says the Republican party of Indiana should be continued in power so that the bill may ba strengthened! Does the governor forget that at the last Republican state convention a resolution was prepared Indorsing the railroad commission bill and congrat-

ulatlng his administration upon its enactment? And does he remember that the corporation forces within his party (the six men referred to by Judge Roby in his Fort Wayne speech) were strong enough to strike that resolution out of the platform entirely? I quote from the Indianapolis News Of April 12, 1906: “Five changes In the Republican platform as originally drafted were made by the committee on resolutions yesterday afternoon. One dropped out the specific indorsement of the railroad commission. • * • There seems to be no question that the specific indorsement of the railroad commission was omitted through the influence of some railroad attorneys."

I submit to the voters that if Governor Hanly was not able to secure an Indorsement of this measure by his party in convention, it is hardly likely that he will be able to strengthen it in a Republican legislature, over which the railroad lobby, so potent in the convention, will exercise a resistless influence. Interest on Public Funds.

The governor claims to be the pioneer reformer on the question of officials turning the interest on public funds into the treasury. It is not important, but I think that honor belongs to that Democratic

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county treasurer of WarshaD county, William O’Keefe, who, proving his faith by his works, paid all the interest received by him into the treasury of his county. But what can be expected of the Republican party of Indiana on this question? In 1903 Senator Parks, a Republican, introduced a bill providing for this reform. It was promptly choked to death by the Republican leaders in committee and heard of no more. In 1905 the Hon. Dan McDonald introduced a similar bill, which met a similar fate at the hands of the same men.

Governor Hanly’a influence was not felt in favor of the latter bill. The Republican party has thus had two opportunities to enact this legislation, but has absolutely refused on both occasions even to consider the proposition. Yet the governor wants another legislature of the same kind. What do the people say? He has much to say about a paltry sum of interest that has recently been turned into the treasury by one of the state officers. Some time ago I read that the secretary of state had turned in $45 or some such amount. But what about the vast sums of money received by the present state treasurer, under the governor’s very nose? The law says it belongs to. the state.

The supreme court has so decided. Why boast of the trifling amount received from your auditor during the campaign while your treasurer defies you and is filling his pockets with Interest money belonging to the state? You have much to say about interest money which you claim is owed by James H. Rice and Oscar Henderson, one dead and the other out of office for eleven years. Why pursue the dead man who can not reply while there is a real live one—a member of your official family —carrying on the business of pocketing the state’s interest within seventyfive feet of your office door? You know he is getting it. So does everybody else. How does it happen that a heroic reformer like yourself, whs bullied Sherrick into resigning and drove him to prison, now eower and tremble in the presence of Nat U. Hill? Mr. Kern concluded his great speech by reviewing the numerous broken platform promises of the Republican party In this state, and in this connection asked:

"How mapy broken promises and betrayals of trust must be made before the people are aroused to realization of the fact that with the forces dominating the last state convention In control there can be no reform in Indiana?”