STATES & CITIES: At Frankfort

STATES & CITIES

Busy indeed was Republican Flem Sampson’s last day in office as Governor of Kentucky. As Frankfort prepared to inaugurate a Democrat on the morrow. Governor Sampson commissioned 40 more

Kentucky colonels including Radioactor Phillips (“Seth Parker”) Lord. Publisher John B. Gallagher of the Louisville Herald-Post and Banker Charles Bradley of Newark, N. J. There were five death sentences to be commuted to life imprisonment. A blind magistrate who had robbed a Baptist church was to be paroled. So was a Paducah woman who had murdered with dynamite. The Governor reduced 150 prison sentences and closed his executive journal with clemency for a ‘legger.

Next day 62-year-old Ruby Laffoon, oldtime lawyer and judge, presented himself on the Capitol esplanade to take the Governor’s oath. Tall (6 ft.), solid (180 lb.), with crow’s feet around kindly eyes, big mouth and a booming bass voice, Democrat Laffoon had won last month’s election in no small measure by his ability to put names to faces. He first met Grover Cleveland when as a lad he had marched into the White House with a paper which he doggedly refused to give to any one but the President himself.

Mr. Laffoon’s face twitched with emotion as he raised one hand to swear, rested the other on a Bible opened at: “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.” In his inaugural address he promised more road building, economy, better schools. Republican Sampson by his side premised him “unstinted support,” added: “We who love Kentucky realize one of the most outstanding needs is a moratorium on selfish, low, mean, part politics.””Both the Laffoon and the Sampson feet ached before a two-hour parade had finished its march.

Headlined the Cincinnati Enquire. characteristic fashion:

PILOT LAFFOON

IS TAKEN ABOARD

BY GOOD SHIP KENTUCKY FOR FOUR-YEAR CRUISE.