Emmons County record., 1917-03-15

During the 1916 campaign there was
u great deal said about ousting the pol
iticians from state Office. Even Sidney
Smith, farmer and friend of the
farmer, was ignored because he was
supposed to be politician. In other
words, he had had some experience in
public life.
Lynn j. Frazier was heralded as a
product of the farm, an "honest-to-
God" farmer. He was to displace u.
L. Burdick, the politician Frazier is
governor. Is he politician? His
every movement, even at this early a
date, answers loudly in the affirmative.
10 the victor belongs the spoils. His
interviews since election have shown
that. He has dug up technicality by
which he proposes tn throw out of Of
flee the members Of the board of re-
gnts who were appointed before Fra
Zicr took Office, and who were given to
understand that they were to serve for
certain term of years. If their ap-
pointment was technically improperly
made, and there is some question as to
that, if he did not propose 10 be pol
itician and to place himself on the
same level with any ordinary ward pol
itician, he would have rectiiied the
technical blunder by reappointing for
the rest of their respective terms the
men who had given up other pursuits
to accept the positions on the under
staEding that the job was to last GER
tain length of time. Frazier did moth
ing of the sort. Hc calmly informed
the old board members that they were
canned" fired, bounced, or whatever
you please to call it, In their places
were to be men who had been Frazier's
hackers in the last campaign. OF
course, such business is common in pol.
tics. But--FraZier was supposed tc
be bigger and broader than the pro.
fessional politician The same scheme
was used with two of the board of con.
troll members Note the difference ir
the makeup of Frazier who refused tt
give point when the state scnat.
turned down his board of regent ous
ter proceedings, and that of Lewis the
old guard appointec kicked off the
board of control. With the senate in
clncd TO back him up until his tim:
expired, he voluntarily appeared be
fore the senate committee and statet
that he preferred to step ont rather
than be the cause of any further fric
ton in an already badly.torn state.
But Kicking out officials was not til,
extent of the governors political ma
nipulations. During the campaign
and since-he has made much of tn,
alleged incident wherein some ho
words were spoken by member Of tn
1915 session to the effect that some fal
mer who was Gus sing the members wa
told to 'go home aad slop the hogs.
And the matter at issue in that aessioi
vas the Equity tcrnlimal elevator prop
osition. II was that year that Lotus
of the Equity, ned MS famous icgis
lative roil-cn It Was chat scss.,
that turned down the r.cyatcr rrojec
and A. { Townlcy mas openly pro
claimed hi. the it,. cnt caused tn,
nonpartisan league movement.
All of which is very fine, but-th'
Legislature this year passed measure
authorizing the appointment of com
mission and the spending of three hun
dred Thousand dollars to provide ter
minal elevator, as desired by the Equi
ty, either within or without the state
The legislature further gave the gov
ernor complete control of the body
They could 90 as far as they liked AM
stop when they liked. They were re
quired 10 do absolutely nothing tina