The daily Missourian. [volume] (Columbia, Mo.) 1916-1917, 1917-08-30
THE TEXAS GOVERNOR

In Columbia town specially in
terested in the state and in which the
state is specially interested-the con-
troversy in Texas between Governor
Ferguson and the state legislature
has local appeal The governor is to
be tried by the senate on impeach
ment charges preferred by the house
of representatives. Concerning the
picturesque governor the New York
Evening Post says:
To Texans the impeachment of
Governor Ferguson, in his second
term since the efforts of the prohibi-
tion-Democrats to defeat him last
year failed. is no doubt serious mat
ter To outsiders there is more of
comedy in the situation. with its con-
comitants of the chicken-salad case"
before the Supreme Court. of the gov
ernor's "bear-fght" with the tin
Jesuses" of the State University fac
ulty, of his refusal to tell who lent
him $156,000 at time when in his
view the agitation of my private af-
fairs had turned all the banks against
me-" and his quarrel with Ex-Governor
Colquitt, who he alleges had 1.-The real
pickings" from the use of state money
in private banks. Other states, in the
highly developed East, have had gov
ernors whose use of funds not theirs
required prying into. Other states
have had governors who set out, in
Fergusons phrase, to 'lambast" the |
existing order at the State University. |
A man of the picturesque diction, the |
nonchalant self-confidence of Farm
er Jim" is one to remove the sting |
from these things. Could Sulzer have |
said. 81 don't have to give reasons. l
am governor of Texas?
Even with the testimony at the
House hearings before us, there
should be no prejudicing the case
The first charge is that the governor,
in face of a court decision, withheld
from the state sums expended for
groceries and automobile supplies. In
Colquitt's time the legislature actually
money for groceries at
the executive mansion. But the
courts declared that it had no right
to pay for the executive salads, and
Ferguson accepted an appropriation
for light and fuel, with groceries"
omitted. His defense for his misuse
of this appropriation is frank. Il
have to entertain ten hundred people
at the mansion during the year. They
are the ones who eat the butter, con-
sumo the gasoline and then they be-
come incidentals. For that reason
President Wilson is given 100000 a
year. John Gamer wired me that .
he is" Equally frank is the governor I
in facing the charge that he violated /
the laws by withdrawing from a bank
in which he is stockholder more than
twice the legal amount. There isn't I
a bank in Texas in the last twenty {
five years that hasn't violated Shat S
provision. Your bank in Dallas has {
it twenty-seven times" He
resents a bank suit for an accounting
as "blackmail" The charge that he 1
tried to bribe the Speaker to drop i'm /
peachment proceedings is totally de-
MED, as are other charges involving {
money. But that of most importance, :
to Texans and outsiders alike, is with .
regard to the State University. Texas
University at the capital began to
draw Ferguson's ire long before, as
one senator puts it, people dreamed
Of war in Germany and hell in
Texas"
This fiourishing institution, pride of
many anu IldlCl VI !
number of public men, had not failed
to try to please the governor. 1t was
performing excellent work in training
thousands of students; but he de-
clared that this high-toned stuff at
the University isn't doing the people
any good" He asserted that he could
take five girls out of the sororities,
and would bet by united effort they
could not preserve a can of peaches
so that it would keep five days. The
provides too much favor
itism for too few people" Yet, to
Ferguson's amazement, some men are
hog wild over higher education" He
wanted to make certain that the pro-
fessors would work for their pay
eight or ten hours a day, like the
governor and the judges he
wanted one old servant, paid by both
university and the San Antonio School
Board, ito be booted out if he had
been there fifty years.
He warned the regents that il they