CHAPTER 32
I AM ELECTED GOVERNOR OF MICHIGAN
THERE WAS much dissatisfaction with the state of public affairs in Michigan. Higher ideals of government began to be asserted in many places. A man, perhaps worthy enough, but who was regarded as being very ordinary, had been elected Governor for a third term. The State was bankrupt.
At least one of the state institutions, Jackson prison, was notorious for its mismanagement and worse. The state treasurer, Glazier, was discovered short several hundred thousand dollars in his accounts. He had been closely identified with Warner, personally and politically, and had carried large deposits in the bank in which Warner was a stockholder and officer. The warden of Jackson prison, Armstrong, had been convicted of crookedness in prison affairs and sentenced to a term of confinement. The air was filled with distrust. Charges and rumors pursued each other in the public mind. Consequently when the Warner administration proposed to perpetuate itself by the nomination and election of Patrick H. Kelley, who was Lieutenant-Governor, there was an upheaval of opposition. This took form in several counter movements.
A number of my friends urged me to become a candidate for Governor. They called attention to the condition of affairs only too apparent in the State. Furthermore they stated that the Upper Peninsula had never been given a governor. Naturally, they reminded me of my experience in state affairs. I was not permitted to forget what they had often heard me say, that I thought every citizen was obligated to serve his country at any time he was needed, in peace or war, and should hold himself in readiness to do so, and should freely and frequently offer. I had not thought of being a candidate but it was not difficult to persuade me to be. Perhaps the one thing that had most to do with my decision, after the duty that I held to be involved, was the possession of an independent temperament, that did not seem to permit a consideration of the countless cautions that come so frequently to all persons in public place.
It really seemed that a person so constituted might render valuable service at this very time. I had in mind a number of things that I thought ought to be given state attention. One of these was a workmen’s compensation law. I was heartily in favor of woman suffrage, and though I could not be called a prohibitionist as the term was defined then, and was not at that time a total abstainer, I was opposed to the saloon and to commercialized booze. I knew that it had the largest control of state and local politics, not only where its interests were involved, but extended its dictation far beyond in a meddlesome way just because it had the power. I proposed to take a shot at this social hyena if I got a chance, and in order to get a shot I decided to stalk it. Moreover, I was in a position of economic independence, with sufficient means so that I did not have to depend upon a public income, nor upon persons who might subscribe to a campaign with the hope and purpose of controlling me, and yet I did not possess so much that my interests ramified in directions where I might suffer injury from those who control the money affairs of the country and destroy the credit of any who oppose them, which is a way they have if one falls into their power.
I became a candidate for Governor. There were three other candidates: Patrick H. Kelley, of Lansing; Amos Musselman, of Grand Rapids, and Justice Robert M. Montgomery, of the Supreme Court of Michigan. At the start it looked as though Mr. Kelley would win easily if the Warner opposition, general as it was, was divided among three. The best-equipped candidate of all, in some respects, was Justice Montgomery. He was a distinguished member of Michigan’s highest court and had friends in every part of the State. He had the backing of the Supreme Court, which at that time did not hesitate to sit into the game of politics, and it knew how with the best of them.
There is a constitutional provision in Michigan prohibiting a circuit judge from being a candidate for a political office while on the bench and for one year after retiring from such service. I did not believe that Mr. Montgomery had considered whether it was right for him, as a member of a court whose duty it was to enforce this law, to do that which was a violation of the very principle he was obligated to compel others to observe (nor did Mr. Hughes search his soul deeply in this regard). I was certain he had no moral right to be a candidate and I even questioned his legal right. Against the counsel of all my close advisers, I addressed an open letter to him setting forth the claim that legitimately and ethically he had no right to be a candidate and ending by demanding his withdrawal. I was determined at the outset to be open and aboveboard in all of my actions and utterances as a candidate, wherever the welfare of the State was concerned. My statement caused a sensation in political circles. It made the friends of Justice Montgomery very angry, and they were swift to call attention to the act as proof of my backwoods’ crudeness and my unfitness to be Governor of a great state. Also for a time, Justice Montgomery was as angry as his friends. Finally, his high sense of honor, his keen, intellectual appreciation of the justness of my position, and his ethical standards caused him to view the situation differently. He was big enough finally to achieve self-mastery. He sent me word, in fact told me personally, that if I would let up on the matter he would retire from the field if a graceful way was presented. At once, I took the matter up with the real friends of the Justice. The result was that he retired from the gubernatorial contest and accepted a place on the newly erected intermediary court at Washington.
This left three candidates. The nomination of Mr. Kelley was freely predicted. He was a cheery, genial, lovable person, who carried the serious things of life lightly and radiated good-fellowship. As a political campaigner he was supposed to be invincible. His friends said hopefully and warningly: “Just wait until he gets that man Osborn on the platform and watch Kelley clean up on him.”
I quite agreed with them that Mr. Kelley might do things to me, but even in secret I was not afraid. I had gone into the fight hammer and tongs, and had made up my mind to give as hard thrusts as I could and take smilingly all the enemy gave to me. While yet a boy I had been taught that in life a man must be just as good as an anvil as he is as a hammer; take blows as well as give them.
There were the usual Lincoln Club, Chandler Club, McKinley Club and Washington Birthday political banquets that are quite peculiar to Michigan where they have been developed to the nth potency. Musselman did not seem to be much in evidence at these feasts. Kelly and I were invited to all of them. At first the attraction was what Kelley might do to me. Afterwards the curiosity centered about what I might say about the Warner-Kelley machine. I had to hook Kelley up to the Warner odium, which was not hard to do, because his generous disposition had influenced him good-naturedly to tag along after Warner.
There was a great deal of distrust felt between the two peninsulas of Michigan. The people of the Lower Peninsula thought of the Upper Peninsula as being controlled by a coterie of mining autocrats who were political despots, possessed of a determination to dodge their taxes and duties and milk the State of its rich resources with no return, or as little as possible. The Upper Peninsula, and especially the people of the mining regions, regarded their Lower Peninsula fellow-citizens as being a lot of hayseeds and rubes, who were not fit for free government and impossible of comprehending the merits of the northern portion of the State. My opponents used this prejudice and fanned it persistently. The population of the State was about two and a half million people in the Lower Peninsula, two-thirds of the area, and about three hundred thousand in the Upper Peninsula. The northern section was overwhelmingly Republican, and had been known, especially when General Alger was beaten in the lower section, to reverse the Democratic decision below the straits. Such fealty had its reward from the Republican managers just to the extent that was thought necessary to keep it in line. It had never been accorded a Governor and many wise ones predicted that it never would. I do not think there was a time during the campaign when my best friends in the Upper Peninsula thought I could win. I did not worry about that, nor was I deeply concerned about the issue of the contest.
I decided that the battle ground was the Lower Peninsula and there I went, going from county to county, most of the time by automobile. I did not make a speech in the Upper Peninsula. I enjoyed the campaign. It was hard, but it gave me a chance to see and talk to the people which I did with earnest bluntness and direct conviction. I visited every county in the Lower Peninsula and made speeches in all of them, often ten or fifteen in a day, many of course being only a few minutes in length, and many of greater length. When the campaign was at its height as many as thirty automobiles would follow me through the county, as upon a triumphal tour. Bands, banners and enthusiasm made an atmosphere, and the audiences were certain to be good. For the most part I did not talk politics. It was safe to assume that the voters understood. They did. I promised to clean out the Warner gang that had wrecked and disgraced Michigan. That seemed to be what they wanted.
Just before election day Amos Musselman encouraged the editor of the Escanaba Journal to make an attack upon my honesty. Thousands of copies of the paper were circulated over the State. The enemy saw that the libel was reprinted wherever possible. They hoped that it was too late for me to defend myself. I had the editor arrested at once and started suit against Musselman and others. I felt within myself that if the people could be fooled by an eleventh-hour move of this kind, there was no way to prevent it. Knowing my innocence I trusted to the good sense of the voters. At the primaries, I was successful by the following vote: Osborn, 88,270; Kelley, 52,337; Musselman, 50,721. My vote in the Lower Peninsula was the big surprise to the dopesters. Below the straits it was 69,479 and 18,791 above.
As soon as the matters could be forced to an issue, the editor who had libeled me was convicted, and Musselman, in humiliation, made public admission that he had done wrong, and the case against him was dropped. As showing his fairness and good citizenship and his realization of his responsibilities as a publisher, I may say here that in 1918 when I was a candidate for the nomination of United States Senator, this editor was one of my strongest supporters.
The state campaign that followed was not as much of a contest as the primary had been, but it was a fight. The late Lawton T. Hemans, of Ingham County, was nominated by the Democrats. Hemans was a strong man. He had been a candidate for Governor before and was well known and respected. As a lawyer and local historian, he had covered much of Michigan creditably. It was a midyear campaign, between the presidential contests. There was nothing to prevent interest from centering upon a state campaign.
Republican dissatisfaction and insurgency were in the air. The Taft administration program of blunders was just becoming known. Only seven States in the Union were carried by the Republicans. I received one of the largest majorities given a Republican Governor that year, 1910. The vote on election day was Osborn 202,803; Hemans, 159,770, or a plurality for me of 43,033.
During the campaign the Democrats had combed my record with particular care, but found nothing they could use.
