Jasper County Democrat, Volume 11, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 July 1908 — A SHAMELESS SET OF LEADERS. [ARTICLE]

A SHAMELESS SET OF LEADERS.

The republican state committee met at Indianapolis last Thursday for the ostensible purpose of hearing reports from the various district committeemen, as to conditions in the different parts of the state, but really for the purpose of getting “Yim” Watson in some kind

of shape to present him to the public. It Is notorious that "Yim” was the candidate of the liquor interests, and that locally his friends belonged to that wing of the g. o. p., and this view is being taken by a dangerously large number of persons throughout the state. The various committeemen having heard from these people and In no uncertain language, too, met to see what could be done, and the Indianapolis Sun, in a signed article, says that the spectacle of “Yim” Watson who was nominated by the whiskey men, now making speeches against the whole liquor business, is so absurd that many of the party leaders are demanding that some one be put on the stump and let “Yim” go way back and sit down, and this may happen in the near future. The following excrept from the report of the meeting by the Indianapolis Star, a republican prosperity sheet that went "democratic” recently and is now run under the ■ - / direction of the United States Courts, shows how reliable the news service of that paper Is: “James P. Goodrich presided at the meeting of the state committee yesterday. All of the members were present except Oliver P. Ensley of the Seventh District and Harry L. Bender, member from the Eleventh District. Mrs. Ensley is ill in Ohio, and Mr. Ensley is with her.” It will be noted that Oliver Perry Ensley, chairman of the Seventh Congressional District committee, (Marion county) was not present, and his absence was noted as being caused by his wife’s sickness In Ohio. His wife was sick in Ohio, or at least she was reported to be sick, at Wapakoneta, 0., but Ensley’s absence was caused by other reasons altogether. Ensley was county treasurer of Marion county, until he was replaced by a democrat last January, and paid a visit to Indianapolis only the day before the committee met to transact a little business with the Sheriff of Marlon county, where he had been indicted for embezzling funds that should have been turned into the county treasury, but which were turned into his pocket, it is alleged. Recently, after an investigation had been made, he turned over to his democratic successor some $22,000, and by this act he acknowledged he had taken this sum wrongfully. The grand jury found that there were other sums that they considered had been wrongfully appropriated, and they found three indictments against him accordingly, last week. His presetice at the committee meeting under these circumstances might have proved somewhat embarassing, especially since so many of his intimate party associates in Marion county are under fire, and a number of them have the fate of the erstwhile chairman of the tenth congressional district, T. J. McCoy, staring them in the face. In fact Henry W. Marshall, McCoy's immediate successor, is being prepared for that emergency at Indianapolis now. But this should not have kept Ensley away from this meeting, the fact that a long list of those who have so valiently labored to save the country are now working for the state at Michigan City, and at starvation wages, too, did not seem to dampen the ardor of the g. o. p. at this meeting, and after it was over they gave out as rosy a prediction of victory this fall as could be asked for by the most optomistic.