The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1910-07-27

that I believe that money spent on
schools is we'll spent and / believe that
the educational system should be
made as perfect and as far reaching
as it acn possibly be in order that
succeeding generations may be made
up of wisely and we'll instructed men
and women. The $350,000 increase
to educational purposes made under
the Stubbs administration is but a pal
try portion of the total and there
still remains the vast sum of $1,150,-
900 that was spent with no CORES
ponding benefit to the tax payers of
the state. Sixty-fve per cent of the
Increase was devoted to the contin-
gent fund and to the establishment of
boards and offices created by Stubbs,
himself to strengthen his power for
political advancement in the future.
II want to promise you here on this
platform tonight that if the people of
Kansas make me their governor I will
not use my office for the promotion of
my own political interests and that
while sit in the governors chair I
will be candidate for no other poll
tical position. / consider the office of
governor the greatest honor which the
people of the state can confer upon
one of their fellow citizens. But if
the men of Kansas by their votes
proclaim their preference for the wild
extravaganza of the present admins
tration, if they prefer to see their po-
litical offices debauched for the ad-
vancement of a rapacious political
ambition, want to say that two years
from now will appear before you
as an advocate of woman's suffrage"
Mr.. Wagstaff then proceeded to un-
fold with clever play of language his
own account of how he had been "in-
spected" at his successive campaign
meetings by one or another of the staff
of Stubbs administration officers who,
laying aside their official duties as oil
inspector. fish warden. live stock in
spector or board member. were trav-
cling over Kansas on q state expense
account to report to the Stubs cam
paign managers the progress of the
Wagstaff campaign.
''At every one of the 105 meetings
before which 1 have appeared. with
the possible exception of not to exceed
seven, I have been carefully inspected
by one or another representative of
the Stubs Administrations he con-
cluded. Even the governor himself
has been present at some of my meet
ings to see how the people received my
doctrines. so that for a part of the
time since l issued my defy on May
10 the people of Kansas have not even
had a governor at work in his office.
If this has happened on account of
the boy orator or the bull pup as
my opponents have referred to me,
full grown man had tackled the Stubs
administration?
Conditions ut Penitentiary.
One of the hardest hits of Wagstaff's
speech was the comparison between
conditions that exist at the state peni-
tentiary and at the soldiers home at
Fort Dodge. The speaker described
his observations at the penitentiary,
where beautiful banks of flowers
brighten the assembly hall of the con-
victs. He told how the inmates of the
penal institution are accorded play
ground privileges. how their apart
ments are made comfortable and
how an orchestra discourses sweet
strains of music during the Sunday
dinner hour
Then he told of his visit to the old
soldiers home at Fort Dodge. where
the veterans of the Civil war are gath
public charges. A barren, cherries
hall Is set aside for the reception of
visitors. No pictures relieve the drear
monotony of dingy walls, which show
neither signs of paint nor paper. Gap
ing cracks along the window jambs
admit the blasts of winter and during
the summers heat the meager provi-
sions of the building provide nothing
for the comfort of the veterans who
are obliged to seek shelter in the in
stitution
'I tell you that the sanitary ar
rangements of the assembly hall at
Fort Dodge are inferior to those of
the cattle barns at Manhattan I, too,
believe in sentiment, but put the senti-
ment where it belongs If we must
nave this carnival of extravaganza let
US coddle the old soldier rather than
the convict. Stubbs advocates pen
sioning the wives of the convicts. Have