THE LOUISVILLE CONTESTED ELECTION CASES

I suppose we may safely assume that these witnesses never prayed, " Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, lest we forget." The story of the violence and the fraud practiced by the police, the city and county officials and their imported allies cannot here be told in detail, but the more conspic uous even ft and the character of the con spiracy may be briefly pointed out. On registration day a 1901 Yale gradu ate, age 25, weight 140 pounds, a gentleman of high character and standing in the city, went to a certain polling place at the request of the City Club, and in the interest of an honest election. Saloon-keepers and policemen working for the Democratic party insisted he must remain 50 feet from the voting place. When he protested that the law provided for no 50-foot line on regis tration day and that its establishment would only serve as a pretext for arrest, a policeman weighing 215 pounds slipped up behind him and savagely struck him twice with his stick, rendering him unconscious. When he came to himself he was in the cus tody of a police-lieutenant who threatened to club him with his black jack. He was then taken to the station house and thrown in a cell with two negroes and though badly injured, an hour elapsed before he received medical attention. It was admitted that the establishment of the 50-foot line on registration day was unlawful, but the policeman who had been . guilty of this assault was acquitted by the Judge of the City Court, while the man whom he had beaten up was convicted. A committee of prominent citizens appealed to the Board of Public Safety for a trial of charges against the policeman, but the Board of Safety would not give a hearing to the charges, the written charges were abstracted from the records, and the policeman was placed on duty at the same polling place on election day. At the same place on registration day late in the afternoon and some time after this first assault both policemen disappeared

around the corner. It was the first time both of them had been absent that day. Thereupon three men came from around the same corner to the polling place and assaulted with slung shots another young representative of the City Club, a member of a prominent Kentucky family, broke his nose -and rendered him unconscious for half an hour. There was no pretense that he had been in any way offensive. The assailants were never found. These two unprovoked assaults by or with the connivance of those whose duty it was to prevent and expose crime aroused the whole public, regardless of party differences, but the object of the machine was only shown when the evidence in the contest cases developed the fact that there were 51 illegal registrations in the precinct where those assaults took place. On election day 41 of this number voted. At another precinct on registration day an old Confederate General, a personal friend of President Roosevelt and a man of national reputation, was sent for to explain to the registration officers the law as to challengers. Without any provocation he was knocked into the gutter by two re peaters who were demanding 'the right to vote, but the policeman at that place de clined to arrest them without a warrant. Here 41 illegal registrations were proved, of whom 35 voted. Toward the end of the registration the police in this precinct left the polls, and the repeaters after register ing would change their clothes on the sidewalk before re-entering the polls. In an effort to check illegal registrations the City Club stationed men with cameras at precincts where they were expected to take snapshots of repeaters in the hope that they might thus be identified and prosecuted. In one precinct in a ward to which a number of camera men were sent five men registered six times each, and in another precinct in the same ward nineteen men registered three times each. The Chief of Police instructed his officers "to