The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-12-09
POLITICAL POKER IN KANSAS.
Momentous Questions Determined That
 Way by Grasshopper Statesmen


 Topeka is much agitated over Teye.a- lions of draw poker in high places, and noth.rs could better show than this uiI- roar what inroa6s the civilizaucn of the east is making on the life tf the bound less prairies. Once upon a tin" draw takpr was to Kansas what brid-e wh St is to tEe parlors of the lashlor i5ie. IL Was pra, tised as an art, pas m'. forprofession. No one thought then Of conceaIing his play of the game, but. rather, it was a subject of pride and boasting. Indeed, it was more than game, for it served at times in the adju- dication of the most serious problems of state or government.
 At present the law of Kansas recog- nizes the game of chance known as drawing lots" as the proper means of deciding all ties in elections, but for merly draw poker was resorted to as more orderly means of compromising. For example, in one of the western counties, when two arniable gentlemen tied for the office of representative they played a game of "freeze-out' to deter mine which should enjoy the office. Again, not so many years ago, when the senate committee on congressional appointment came to a deadlock over the divers plans for dividing the state into congress districts, the members ad- journed to a room in the Copeland, took each a generous stack of chips and played to a finish. Under the terms of this historical game the committeeman who lost his chips withdrew himself and his apportionment plan from fur ther considerations; and when the game was reduced to two gentlemen, the one who froze the other out fixed the plan of apportionment, which stands with little change as the plan of to-day.
 Volumes could be written of poker in- cidents in Kansas. Once a well known congressman, who. by the way, has re- appeared in Kansas politics, had to meet the charge made by some over-prudish people that he was addicted to the game of poker. He appealed to his political associates to help him out The one who came most energetically to his res cue was Captain Bill Hackney, the Win field statesman. "I am in position to state" certified the doughty captain, that MT. Blank is less addicted to the game than any man ever played With.'
 More elaborate but quite as effective was the defence once made by Steve Osborn, ex-speaker of the Kansas house. Some twelve years ago Steve was running for reelection to the office of district judge in western Kansas. The Pops got out handbill accusing him of being poker player and cir culated it widely. ...4...... .....
 Some of these handbills came to Jim Reede and the rest of the boys at Hays City, and they conceived the idea of de- lending Steve from such baseless aecu- sations. Therefore they prepared a se- ries of affidavits setting forth that Steve was not a poker player. To prove it they cited numberless instances where he had backed into jackpot on pair of deuces or overplayed rank two pair, or tried to run sandy with bob tail flush. But Steve was game.
 At his meeting he would first read the charge that he was poker player, and then the defence made by his friends at Hays City. The humor of the situation caught the people and they reelected him almost unanimously. And, poker player or, not, he made one of the best judges the district had ever known.
 We have said that it was evidence of the inroads of new civilization to find the poker playing charge in use as a po- litical weapon. But a better evidence is found in the fact that the politicians of Topeka are entering denials. If any thing has been known in Kansas, it is that poker games have been regularly played by the politicians--that is, by many of thenn-at the Copeland Hotel, in private rooms, in numberless places where the cult are wont to gather. It has been reparded as a gentlemen game" that is, a game played for req sonable stakes among men who liked the excitement and were not averse to spending hundred or two of another mans money. The charges and counter charges now being made at Topeka are rather more serious. They attribute something perilously near professional playing to some who are in high office. It is alleged that the stakes ran high and that the game had victims" New ertheless, this may be exaggeration due to the virulence of functional politics;
 
 and the games complained of were no more perhaps than the "gentleman's game' which has gone on interminably.
 Be that as it may, those who are laughingat the denials of the Topeka politicians should not lose sight of the significance of this denial, for it marks the departure of Kansas from the day of open playing to the day of conceal ment, and signals the arrival of code of ethics under which officnaldom must have care of it's poker inclinations. In fact, there has risen cult of prudes in Kansas who question the propriety of high officials playing for money in even a "gentlemen's game" and, while they may shock our conceptions of broad ness, they have a fashion of going to fote.-Kansas City Journal.
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