CHAPTER XXXV

The Harmon Regime-An Honest Administration-The One Per Cent Tax Law-Creation of Public Service Commission-The Workman's Compensation Law-Suspension of Favoritism and Respect for Civil Service-Benefits to Democracy-A Wise Chief Executive-The Baltimore Convention.

The success which the Democratic Party gained in Ohio in 1908 and the prestige which it has since attained were due primarily and ultimately to Governor Harmon. His election in 1908 was a statewide recognition of his character and ability, only one other candidate on the Democratic ticket being elected. During his first term he not only fulfilled the most sanguine expectations of his supporters, but gave an administration that attracted unbounded admiration and confidence and, as a consequence, in the election in 1910 he increased his first majority of 19,000 to more than 100,000, swept the state and carried the entire Democratic ticket to success with him.

His regime not only exalted his name in Ohio, but made him known throughout the United States as a truly great Governor, and as the year of 1912 approached eyes were turned toward him from all parts of the country, recognizing in him perhaps the fittest if not the most likely man that could be nominated by the Democratic Party for the Presidency. The history of his regime as well as a sketch of his life up to the Spring of 1912 appeared in the April number of the Editorial Review from the pen of Robert M. Dittey, and that article is such a fair and modest review of the Governor and his successful administrations that it is embodied here.

"If for no other reason than that he possesses, in a pre-eminent degree, those prime essential qualifications-fitness and availability— Governor Judson Harmon of Ohio should be selected by the Democrats as their candidate for President. Others may be equally fit, none is as available.

"Blest with a strong body and a sound constitution, he has been able to perform the arduous labors and assume the heavy responsibilities which have fallen to him during a long and active career, without drawing upon his reserve forces, and in consequence he possesses the activity and strength, mental and physical, common to men twenty years his junior. In him we find the ripened judgment of the man of sixty-five combined with the vigor and energy of the man of forty-five.

"His career may be briefly sketched as follows: The son of a Baptist minister and born at Newton, Hamilton County, Ohio, February 3, 1846, after working his way through Denison University and the Cincinnati Law School, he began the practice of his profession. At the age of thirty he was elected a Judge of the Common Pleas Court of Hamilton County, but on a contest was unseated by a Republican State Senate. Two years later he was elected a Judge of the Superior Court of Cincinnati. Being reelected in 1883, he resigned in 1887 to become a member of a firm which succeeded that of ex-Governor George Hoadly. Recognized as a profound lawyer, he quickly built up a large practice and has for many years stood at the head of his profession in his home city of Cincinnati and in the State of Ohio. During his long and distinguished career as a lawyer he never accepted employment from a corporation in a case against the people.

"Chosen by Mr. Cleveland in 1895 as a member of his cabinet, Governor Harmon measured up to the high standard of excellence and ability established by his many brilliant predecessors in the office of Attorney General. It fell to him to uphold and defend the Sherman Anti-Trust Law, then but recently passed by Congress in an effort to restrain and prevent illegal combinations; this he successfully accomplished in the trans-Missouri freight cases and the proceedings against the Addystone Pipe Company et al. Through his efforts in these cases that law was firmly established and made an efficient agency to control illegal combinations in restraint of trade.

"Later he was appointed, with Mr. F. N. Judson, of St. Louis, by President Roosevelt to inquire into alleged violations of an injunction suit against the practice of rebating by the Santa Fe Railroad

Company in favor of the Colorado Fuel, Coal & Iron Company, one of the most offensive trusts in the country. The late Paul Morton, who was at that time a member of President Roosevelt's cabinet, had been at the head of the traffic department of the railroad during the period when it was charged rebates had been made. These gentlemen found that the injunction had been violated and that rebates amounting to more than a million dollars had been allowed within a period of two years, and that both in law and fact the officers in charge of the traffic department were responsible, and recommended that a rule be taken requiring those officers to show cause why they should not be punished for contempt for violation of the order of the injunction. It was in that report Governor Harmon gave expression to that now celebrated epigram 'Guilt is always personal,' adding that 'so long as officials can hide behind their corporations no remedy can be effective. When the government searches out the guilty men and makes corporate wrong-doing mean personal punishment and dishonor the laws will be obeyed.' President Roosevelt, after much shilly-shallying, delay and insistence that proceedings should be instituted against the corporation only and not against any of its officers, finally flatly refused to allow any other course to be taken. Because both considered that such a course would be mere mockery of justice, they resigned and a subservient judge having been selected, Mr. Roosevelt's friend was whitewashed.

"As receiver of the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton and Pere Marquette Railroads, he so successfully managed these properties that he was able to restore them to their stockholders without the loss of a single dollar to any one. Previously, as Receiver of the Baltimore & Ohio Southwestern Railroad, he had reorganized that property and when he transferred it to the stockholders there was no loss sustained by them or by any creditor or employee.

"Chosen as the Democratic candidate for Governor of Ohio in 1908, he was elected by a majority of over 19,000, although William H. Taft, the Republican candidate for President, carried the state by a plurality slightly under 70,000. All the other candidates on the Democratic state ticket, with the exception of the candidate for State Treasurer, were defeated at that election. Renominated in

1910, Governor Harmon was elected by a majority of 100,377, carrying through with him the entire state ticket, sixteen Democratic Congressmen, a majority in both houses of the General Assembly, and the entire Democratic ticket in many counties in which no Democratic county officer had been elected in a quarter of a century or more.

"Governor Harmon has always been a consistent advocate of the doctrine that in the partition of powers between the state and nation the Federal Government should not be allowed to break or even stretch the limit set to its activities, but that the people of each state should be left free to work out and conduct for themselves a commonwealth according to their own conceptions, with only such interference upon the part of the Federal Government as may be necessary to preserve the rights of the nation and the inhabitants of other states. It was for these reasons that the Governors of the states, at their annual conference in 1911, selected Governor Harmon as the head of a committee of three of their number to point out to the supreme court of the United States certain instances wherein it is thought the Federal Government has encroached upon the rights of the states, in violation of the Federal Constitution. Briefs have been prepared by that committee of Governors and will be submitted to the United States Supreme Court in certain proceedings now pending before it.

"For more than fifteen years prior to the year of 1905, the affairs of the state had been exclusively and continuously under the control of Republican officials. In that year the dissatisfaction which had been growing among the people about the manner in which their affairs were being conducted became so great that it resulted in the election of the Democratic candidate for Governor. Unfortunately for the people of the state, Governor Pattison lived but a short time after his inauguration, and the control of state affairs again reverted to Republican officials. The State Senate, however, through a combination of Democrats and Independents, was able to institute some investigations of state and city affairs, but before any substantial progress had been made their proceedings were halted by the courts. Enough,

however, was disclosed to show that there had been grafting in the State Treasurer's office and among public officials in the city of Cincinnati.

"In 1908 the people were again resolved to place a man at the head of their affairs who would not only give them a business administration, but would put a stop to stealing by public officials. Believing as he does, that the betrayal of public confidence is the worst of all offenses, and that men who are unwilling or afraid to act when something should be done are unfit for public service, Governor Harmon at once took off his coat. He immediately called upon the General Assembly to enact a number of reform measures which the people had been demanding for years, and kept insisting upon the same in special messages sent from time to time to that body. Both branches of the General Assembly being controlled by the Republicans, his demands were practically ignored and his messages given scant consideration, the Senate, in one instance, laying his message on the table as an intentional act of discourtesy. But even a body as hostile as that General Assembly, was unable to entirely ignore his demands for just legislation, and did enact a few measures formulated by him, but in such emasculated form that the Governor was compelled to veto some, and those which became laws were ineffective. At the same time he pursued, with his characteristic energy and persistence, investigations into the conduct of state affairs, disclosing grafting in many public offices of the state. At his instance proceedings were instituted and large sums have been recovered and paid into the state treasury and a number of criminal indictments were found against individuals, some of whom are at present serving their sentences in the penitentiary.

"It was in this hostile field and in this malignant atmosphere that Governor Harmon was compelled to plant the seeds of the reforms which have been accomplished during the past two years. After he was renominated he went before the people and plead with them if they believed in him, approved of his course, and favored reforms he had sought to bring about, to not only reelect him but to elect all his associates on the state ticket and give him a Democratic legislature. This they did. At once insidious influences were brought