St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1888-09-01
WHEN THE LIGHT WENT OUT
Where Was Mathews Is Not the Cues
ton at Present Raised,
BUT WHY DIDN'T HE VOTE?
He Has Held Many Good Offices For
Han Who Has Never
~, Voted.

Special to the Globe
ABERDEEN, Aug. 3l.-Persons who
listened TO Mr.. Mathews speech at
Watertown, accepting the nomination
for delegate SO uDgraciously rendered
him, will remember that he made in
substance this statement, 81 have
never enjoyed the privilege of voting
for any executive officer, state or
national" Now, apart from the sur
prise and sympathy, naturally excited
in the breast of the convention by this
declaration, the pity which the terri
tory at large will feel for young man
who has never had fair and
SQUARE CHANCE TO VOTE,
an interesting, though not important,
question will arise-Where has Mr..
Mathews been all this.while? He was
born in st. Lawrence county June 4,
1852, and has, therefore, if that register
of celebrities, Longs Dakota Blue
Book" is to be trusted, just turned his
thirty-sixth year. Turning to the same
authority, we learn that the Republican
candidate came to Bookings county,
Dakota, in 1879. He was, therefore,
twenty-seven years of age when he en-
tered upon his
TERRITORIAL CAREER
as lawyer, money-loaner, banker, CAPT
tai locator and politician, which now
brilliantly eliminates in his nomination
as the Republican candidate for dele
gate.
The question is not "Where was
Mathews when the light went out"
This lnterrogatOry seeks to penetrate
the future and might be answered alto
gether too readily to excite popular
curiosity. At BrO0kings, still a lawyer
and loaner OF expensive money, trying
to figure out how Farmer Harden did
it,. The question is,
WHERE WAS MATHEWS
that he failed to exercise the privilege
of the ballot between his twenty-first
and twenty-seventh birthdays? Your
correspondent won't attempt TO elabo-
rate theory, but be it known that If
Mr.. Mathews could not and did not vote
for either president or a governor
during those years, he was yet in his
normal element-politics, and in pur-
suit of his favOrite vOcatiOn-Office-
holding, ION the Side," as the following
extract from the Aberdeen Republican
tends to establish:
"a gentleman residing i'm this city, who
formerly lived in Iowa, is authority for
the statement that George A. Mathews,
the Republican candidate for delegate,
was Democrat in Iowa, and that before
coming to Dakota in 1879 was elected
school commissioner of Fayette county
upon neutrality-suspicious.
ticket. Those who have watched Mr..
Mathews political career in Dakota
unhesitatingly classify him as ''pOli-
tician," but it is probably not so gener-
ally known that his boosted Republic
canism first developed under the foster
ing of Gov. Ordway in a country sup
posed to be eternally Republican.
For young man who has so long
been deprived of the full exercise of the
franchise Mr.. Mathews has done .ex-
ceedingly well. His ''kid'' record is
SIMPLY REMARKABLE.
School commission, district attorney
and capital commissioner (by the grace
of Gov. Ordway), member of the terri
tOrial elected upon an anti-farmer
ticket, not to mention the present NOM
ination and those tid-bits and small
preferments that have doubtless fallen
to his share.
Truly, the burden OF disfranchlsement
has fallen very lightly upon Mr.. Mathi
ews, and complaint comes with poor
grace from man so favored under the
existing order of things. But, unless
straws lie palpably, his chances of ulti-
mately voting are far better than of rep
resenting 100000 people in congress. II