Volume 14 , Issue 40

100 Years Ago Today - 1 October 1912

One hundred years ago today, 1 October 1912, The San Francisco Call, dated Tuesday, in San Francisco, California, was reporting front page headlines, such as: "G.O.P. men Battle For Franchise," "mystery of Big Jewel Theft At Last Revealed," "Colonel Gains Place On Rolls of Ananias Club," and much more 1912 headlines.

Let us take a look at "GOP Men Battle For Franchise," written by George A. Van Smith, and what exactly the were talking about back then. It seems President Taft Electors were petition supreme court for their rightful place on the ballot. It was a legal fight to prevent theft of State. The political freedom of every citizen was involved in this great issue. What did they mean by "Raw Treachery of Moose Bared Before Tribunal?"

George A. Van Smith wrote, "Fighting only for the right to vote as partisans for the candidates of their party, the republicans of California have appealed to the supreme court to prevent the consummation of the meanest political crime ever contemplated in the name of reform."

Van Smith goes on to tell us through their chief counsel, Attorneys Clayberg and Rose, the 13 republicans nominated for presidential electors by the republican convention in Sacramento yesterday applied to the supreme court for a writ of mandate to compel Secretary of State Jordan to put their names on the ballot as republicans and for an order restraining him from putting the names of the progressive nominees on the ballot with any manner of republican designation.

The republicans; petition was filed late on the above date in the afternoon. Several members of the court, including the chief justice, had left for the day, but it was probable that in conference that afternoon the court would grant the alternative writs and set the date for their return.

Sbarboro Verifies Petition

The republicans' petition was verified by Andrea Sbarboro, for himself and on behalf of the 12 republicans nominated with him for electors for president and vice president. Clayberg and Rose would be assisted by Walter R. Bacon and Samuel M. Shortridge of San Francisco and Leroy A. WRight of San Diego.

The issue which would be presented to the court involved the question underlying the republican form of government, the right of franchise. By seizing and attempting to hold the name of the republican party the national progressive party machine in California boldly had proclaimed its intention to disfranchise every republican voter in California. Unashamed of their broken oaths and crying only for the spoils of office, the members of the national progressive party had attempted to deliver California to Roosevelt and Johnson by preventing the republicans from voting for President Taft.

Making no pretense of realty to the solemn oaths they took in order to get their names on the republican primary ballot and having formally and most unequivocally repudiated the republican party and its platform, the party masqueraders, acting under the whip of the administration, purpose to persist in the theft of a party name for the elector candidates who, if elected, would vote for the progressive party candidates.

The republicans of California had been subjected to some raw political jobbery, but never before was there a machine sufficiently drunk with its power to attempt to disfranchise all the members of a great political party. The suprême court, reduced to a single proposition was asked to decide that men who formally had repudiated the republican party in convention, and that candidates who avowedly were members of a party antagonistic to the republican party, were in fact and in law not republicans.

To the plain citizen unversed in the mysteries of applied progressivism that proposition would seem self-evident.   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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