CHAPTER XLII.
INDIANA.
[A.]
Governor Porter made the following novel appointment: On August 30, 1882, Mrs. Georgia A. Ruggles, from Bartholomew county, presented to Governor Porter an application for a requisition from the governor of Indiana upon the governor of Kansas, for William J. Beck, charged with the crime of bigamy. Beck had been living a few months in Bartholomew county and had passed as an unmarried man; had gained the affections of a young lady much younger than himself and much superior to him by birth and education. After their marriage the fact that Beck had already one wife became known and he fled to Kansas. Mrs. Ruggles was a friend to the young lady who had been thus duped, and upon learning the facts she called the attention of the proper authorities to the matter, and begged them to effect Beck's arrest. They were not disposed to do so, and upon various excuses postponed action. She therefore determined to take the matter into her own hands. Governor Porter granted her the desired requisition; she went to Kansas, and on September 10, 1882, she received Beck from Samuel Hamilton, sheriff of Ellsworth county; she herself brought the prisoner, in cuffs, to Indiana, and, September 13, she delivered him into the hands of Thomas E. Burgess, sheriff of Bartholomew county. Beck was tried, convicted and sent to the penitentiary. This bit of justice was the fruit of a woman's pluck and a governor's good sense.
Extract from Gen. Coburn's Address.
The people expect that they will in their own way and time inaugurate such measures as will bring these questions in their entire magnitude into the arena. I hope to see 10,000 women in convention here. They can, if they will, create a public sentiment in favor of their enfranchisement that will be irresistible. They have the ears of the voters; they have access to the columns of the newspapers; they control all the avenues of social life. What can they not accomplish, if, with their whole hearts they set about it? The sphere of public life has many vacant places to be filled by women. Why shall they not serve upon the boards of trustees of our great reformatory and benevolent institutions, as superintendents in our hospitals, and as directors and inspectors in our prisons? The last legislature conferred upon them the right to hold any office in our great school system except one, that of State superintendent of public instruction. From them may now be selected, president of the State university, or of the Normal School, or of Purdue University, school commissioners and county superintendents. But the legislature should give them the power to rescue our prisons, hospitals and asylums from the indescribable horror of filth, neglect and cruelty which hangs like a murky cloud over many of them. Men have tried it and failed. Stupidity or partisanship or brutality or avarice, has transformed many a noble foundation of benevolence into a hell of abomination. Some one must step in to inspect; to enforce order, cleanliness and virtue; to bring comfort and hope to the downcast and to the outcast of society. This purpose must be backed up by the strong arm of power, by the sanction of the law, and that law must have upon it the stamp of woman's intellect. This year the women of Indiana can place themselves in the van of human progress and dictate the policy which mankind must recognize as just and true for ages to come. The public mind is not unprepared for this measure. The spread and the acceptance of great ideas is almost miraculous in intelligent communities.
[B.]
LEGAL OPINION BY W. D. WALLACE, ESQ., UPON THE POWER OF THE LEGISLATURE TO AUTHORIZE WOMEN TO VOTE FOR PRESIDENTIAL ELECTORS.
Capt. W. DeWitt Wallace, Attorney-at-law, Lafayette, Ind.: