The Palatka news and advertiser. [volume] (Palatka, Fla.) 1902-1905, 1904-04-15
CHARGES UNANSWERED.
Governor Jennings Makes ne
Denial of Many Charges
Against him.

Aside from what has been charged
in speeches and in open letters
against the two principal opposing
aspirants for Senator Taliaferro's
place, many matters which demand
ed denial, or explanation if denial
was impossible, no such denial or eX
planatiOn has been forthcoming, and
the accused have permitted the pub
LEGATION of the charges in large
number of the political newspapers
of the state to go unchallenged, thus
practically admitting their truth.
Among the accusations that have
been recited and reiterated in the
state press against Governor Jen-
nings, and which he has failed to an
their truth, are the following: That
he is violating the spirit, if not the
letter, of the constitution in using
the office he holds and the time for
which the people are paying him Il
salary in seeking another Office, and
the wholesome and conscientious eX-
ample of his distinguished prede-
cessor, Ex-Governor Fleming, has
been cited in contrast; that he en-
deavored to. deceive the public by
the publication of collection of al
legged endorsements purporting to
have been gathered from the news
papers of the state, many of which
were shown to be spurious, and
others taken from newspapers long
since dead; that he falsely declared,
in speech in Calhoun County, that
Senator Taliaferro had not been in
his office "eleven times in eleven
months; that he had advocated the
establishment in Florida of the infa-
nous dispensary system; that as a
legislator he had opposed the en-
actment of q railroad commission
law, opposed economy in the admin
istration of state affairs; opposed the
abolition of the convict lease system
and opposed or was indifferent to
primary election legislation; that af-
ter declaring in message that "a
state official, to discharge properly
the duties and functions of his office,
is not only required to give every
possible moment of his time but his
best attention" he is devoting the
greater portion of his official term to
a desperate attempt to induce the
people whom he is supposed to be
serving for pay to give him another
and better office; that as eX-ofiiicio
member of the State Board of Edu-
cation he opposed the payment to
the school fund of interest money to
which it was clearly entitled; that
Notwithstanding his claim to eXclu-
siye credit for the collection" of
the Indian war claim, he neglected
to collect interest upon a portion of
the fund, although plainly advised
in writing by tie State Treasurer
that the same was Justly due to the
state; that in vetoing appropriations
for public buildings he declared that
"the veto power is duty and not II
privilege and at the same time per-
hitting fifty-four bills to become
laws without his official signature;
that these same appropriations
which he regarded it as "a duty" to
veto were those which he had, in his
official message, earnestly recon-
mended the Legislators to enact, thus
using them as tools with which to
manufacture campaign material for
his personal use, by claiming credit
for Saving to the taxpayers" the
amounts thus vetoed; that he has
repeatedly violated both the spirit
and the letter of the party platform in
making executive appointments to
fill vacancies; that through inordi-
nate vanity he caused his name to
be emblazoned in three different
places on the rebuilt State Capital;
that he shocked the tenderest senti-
ments of all Confederate veterans
and the sense of decency of the en-
tire population of the south by using
the portrait of the lamented Gordon
as a campaign document; that he at
tempted, in public speech, to make
political capital for himself by
claiming that he had caused the
cancellation of deeds which practi-
cally gave away" state lands, and
practically gave away the same
lands by selling them at a prce less
than one-third the rate at which
similar lands in the same county
had been sold at private sale; that he
promised, in a campaign document,
If elected senator, to secure legisla-
tion which would give the state four
and a-half million acres of govern
ment land when, by his own show
ing the government appears to have
only one and a-half million acres in
the state to give away, and that he
has persistently violated the plain
of the constitution by re-
fusing to suspend judicial officer
Of whom a circuit judge had, from
the bench, declared that he was ''un-
dt to perform the duties of said |
office, and that his official conduct |
had been ''reprehensible and suspi |
,ious In the extreme. F" !