Home and State (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 15, No. 38, Ed. 1 Saturday, April 18, 1914 Page: 3 of 16
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DALLAS, TEXAS, APRIL 18, 1914
$1.00 Per Year
Vol. 15, No. 38.
THE BALANCE OF POWER IN TEXAS
Close Elections Bring Out Heavy Vote, Enabling Sinister Influen-
at
ces to Control—How Poll Tax List Can be Padded and Re-
peaters Used at the Ballot Box-Conditions in Mc-
Lennan County Illustrate Possibilities of System
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IND
Slo-
ie kno
Vacant Lots Populous,
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7
Q
rses
We
alias
st or
keeper of a lodging-house; the others
were not to be found at the residences
given, and their names do not ap-
pear in the city directory..
his
er-
ort
ses
cas
N
the
ts
e.
An orator at the “Constructive” Dem-
ocratic convention, March 7, declared that
50,000 more poll tax receipts had been
issued to Antis this year than ever
before.
HOW DID HE KNOW?
Facts set forth on this page may
gest the answer.
e
Concentrating Receipts.
Where poll taxes are paid through
(Continued on page 5)
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9,
yp
K
od
It
n-
eco STRUCTIVE
SUPPOSE
A corrupt interest with unlim-
ited money to spend desires to
pad the poll tax lists and hires
crooked men to do the work.
Through orders, systematically
collected, one man can pay any
number of poll taxes.
He can write the orders, and, by
signing names not found in the
neighborhood, run little risk of
detection.
By having the receipts sent to
postoffice boxes, they can all be
concentrated in the hands of one
person in a town, ward or pre-
cinct.
THEN—on election day, if the
vote is close, these receipts, gen-
uine or farudulent, can be doled
out to hired repeaters whose bal-
lots may decide the contest of
candidates or issues.
as voters and whose poll taxes were
paid were not entitled to all the priv-
ileges of citizenship, but these parti-
cular examples are cited to show THE
POSSIBILITIES OF THE SYSTEM.
Switching the point of inquiry to
another place in McLennan County,
evidence has been collected as to an-
other phase of the system’s method of
working. In the little town of Mart,
for many years past, the negro and
Mexican vote has averaged around
fifty and sixty. Last year this class
of voters increased in number to
about ninety; this year it jumped to
190.
In South Second Street eighty-four
voters are registered and of these
thirty-five could not be located
through the directory or otherwise;
of the addresses given by these thir-
ty-five voters., three are vacant lots
and one an alley.
Home and State does not undertake
to say that a voter on any one of these
particular receipts would be fraudulent
or that any one of those registered
Who holds the balance of political power in Texas? When and
where and how is this power exerted—and to what end?
For a good many years, in fact, ever since the enactment of the
Terrell Election Law, there has been a growing suspicion that ex-
tensive frauds have been practiced in Texas elections. Sometimes
these suspicions have led to contests which did not always terminate
satisfactorily to those who raised the issue.
The indefiniteness of these results is due in part to inherent defects
in the law itself; in part to the general lack of understanding of
methods by which the provisions of the law may be nullified; and
the rest to sinister influences striving to retain political power in
the State.
A careful study of conditions in various parts of the State has
disclosed possibilities of corruption almost beyond belief. Concrete
instances may serve to show how the system can and probably does
acquire the balance of power in a close election where certain in-
terests are involved. Here is one :
Rounding Up Negroes.
Early in the year a negro politician
began to circulate among the colored
brethren in and around Mart, getting
orders for poll tax payments. Cer-
tain matters connected with his op-
erations were the subject of a Grand
Jury inquiry a few weeks ago, but it
is not certain just how much light
was thrown upon the subject, as the
negro disappeared from his usual
haunts about this time. It is under-
stood that particular attention was
directed toward the question of wheth-
er he actually collected money from
the negroes for the payment of their
poll taxes. It is forbidden by law for
any one to pay the poll tax for any
other man.
This negro, acting as agent, paid
sixty-four poll taxes; three white
men of Mart paid ill poll taxes, all
on signed orders.
The records in the McLennan coun-
ty courthouse show that seventeen
poll tax payers gave their address at
No. 111 North Second Street, Waco.
All but one gave Mexican names; all
were classed as laborers and all were
required by law to swear that they
actually resided at the number given
on the first day of January, 1913, or,
when the poll tax was paid through
an agent, the agent was required to
make oath to this statement.
No. Ill North Second Street is
part of a small two-story brick build-
ing between a bakery and a Chinese
restaurant. The lower part of the
building at this number is occupied
by a Mexican restaurant, whose pro-
prietor lives upstairs. He has occu-
pied the place, according to his own
statement, only about four months
and keeps no lodgers. He says he
knows nothing of the men registered
as lodgers from that number.
Upstairs he occupies two rooms
with his family. The building is about
thirty feet deep and a twenty-five
foot frontage covers both the Chin-
ese and the Mexican restaurants and
an open stairway. There is absolute-
ly no place downstairs where a
lodger might sleep except on the bare
floor and it is hard to believe that
seventeen men ever could have occu-
pied the two rooms upstairs at one
time.
Not one of the names of these sev-
enteen sovereign voters of the State
of Texas appears in the Waco city di-
rectory. An inquiry covering three
days failed to disclose the where-
abouts of a single one of them in the
city of Waco. EXCEPT FOR THE
RECORD IN THE COUNTY COURT-
HOUSE, THE SEARCH DISCLOSED
NOTHING TO SHOW THAT ANY
ONE OF THESE SEVENTEEN MEN
EVER EXISTED.
BUT-----.
IT MAY BE POSSIBLE FOR SEV-
ENTEEN MEN GIVING NAMES COR-
RESPONDING TO THESE SEVEN-
TEEN REGISTERED VOTERS TO
APPEAR AT THE DEMOCRATIC
PRIMARY IN HE FIRST WARD IN
J HE CITY OF WACO ON THE 25TH
DAY OF JULY AND HELP TO DE-
CIDE WHO SHALL BE IN AUTHOR-
ITY IN TEXAS FOR THE NEXT
TWO YEARS. EACH OF THESE
MEN COULD BE ARMED WITH A
POLL TAX RECEIPT, NOW POSSI-
BLY REPOSING IN A NEARBY
PLACE SECURE FROM FIRE,
AWAITING THE DAY WHEN IT
WILL BE NEEDED.
At No. 113 North Second Street, the
Chinese restaurant, five voters are
registered, for whom search was
made with no more success than at-
tended the search for the voters at
No. 111. At No. 114, which would be
in the middle of a street, another
voter is registered. Four voters are
registered at another small Mexican
restaurant and two others from va-
cant lots in North Second Street.
On the south side of the square,
opposite the City Hall, thirty voters
are registered. One of these is the
-A
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Perkins, A. W. Home and State (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 15, No. 38, Ed. 1 Saturday, April 18, 1914, newspaper, April 18, 1914; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1569593/m1/3/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Library and Archives Commission.