Daily Arizona silver belt., 1909-04-30
A GOVERNOR TRYING TO GOVERN

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 Colorado has a governor.
 A governor who is trying to govern.
 A gwernor who is resisting the in- fiuences that seek to govern him, and, by so ioing, to continue to govern the state.
 His name is John F. Shafroth.
 If you meet him in novel or on the stage you would be interested in the "character, and would discuss 1t quite some.
 Real men ought to be more interest ing than the characters of fiction or drama. Let's see if John F. shaffroth, governor, won't interest us for a few minutes.
 To begin at the beginning Colorado has had hard luck in politics all her statehood life.
 After things settled down 1t was found that the railroads, the trusts and the grafters--including public service orporations--owned the state republi- can organization and the Denver city democratic organization. Denver is so large a part of the state in the way of population, that the grafters had little to fear, even if a popular landslide should reverse the sit uation.
 me people of Colorado, awakening to their plight, sought to escape from bondage. They saw gangs of thugs, fioaters and repeaters used to carry cleo tions. When they gave women the ballot in hope that the average of hon. esty would be raised, the gang laughed and openly marched the scarlet women to the polls and made them vote at pri- mary and on election day for the gang the gang whose petty grafters got ''theirs" in the way of police picking on the unfortunateS of the underworld.
 Whenever, finally, the people, despite election frauds and poodle, won bit ia victory there was always the su- preme court of Colorado ready to pros titute law, justice, equity, morals, com mon honesty and ordinary decency to save the gang.
 So the bipartisan rule prospered
 The picking was fine. | Last fall the gang decided that the democrats might win the state election. Before test of strength was had in the democratic state convention the nonpartisan, bipartisan gang felt that the ''radicals' were pretty strong.
 Oh, yes, out in Colorado, as elsewhere, when man won't stand for gangs and grafters he is radical"
 Well the gang always prefers 8 whole loaf, but it has no serious objection to letting the people soak the tag of the end of the loaf and play with it.. So its manipulators said to the radicals, ''You fellows write the platform and let us name the candidate for United States senator, and then we'll get to- gether on the governor.
 Well, the platform the radicals wrote was daisy. It pledged that, if elected, demicratic legislature would enact a direct primary law, bank guarantee law, a railway commission law, public service commission law, the referendum and other things like that.
 likewise the candidate the gang chose for United States senator was a daisy -Chas. J. Hughes, Jr.
 Chas. J. Hughes, Jr., is a lawyer. He was poor young man when he came to Denver. He has served the "big in- terests" well as lawyer. The gang had just elected Guggenheim as repub- lican senator from Colorado and to have a companion piece in the person of a democrat would be fine. Fine in the matter of federal judgeships and such like.
 So the state convention pledged the democratic candidates to the legisla- ture to elect Hughes senator and to en- act thu laws enumerated in the trad ical" platform.
 Even tho platform did not take the smell off of that convention, so Q re markedly good candidate for governor was needed.
 Then it was that the name of John F. shafroth was suggested The farm CTS and radicals cheered. They called him Honest John," because once when he had been elected to congress, and it had been shown that the cleo tion that year was polluted by gigan- tic election frauds made necessary for the bipartisan gang to continue to own the state supreme court. Shafroth had resigned.
 The big fellows smiled when they heard the cheers for Honest John. '' They had governed governors before,