The election of 1917: a missing sum, a draft board, and two Belgians shot

6 November 1917

The charges, as the campaign made them: The government record of this history prints the election of 1917 as a succession fact — Mayor Ralph W. Gaylor, a Republican, survived it and held his office. What belongs here is the fight itself, and its paper is the South Bend News-Times of election day, 6 November 1917, reporting the Democratic closing rally at the Century Theater the night before. The Democratic candidate for mayor was Achille C. Colpaert; the party's city chairman, Isaac K. Parks, spoke, and J. Fred Bingham with him. The campaign's case against the incumbent, as the paper reports the rally, had three heads. A sum of city money was missing, and the blame for it had been fastened in turn on Parks himself, on former city treasurer Joseph Causer, and on the man who had held the records — an accusation that named the Democrats' own chairman among the blamed, which is how the paper's account presents it: a charge in search of an owner. There was a "conscription board matter" — the draft machinery of 1917, charged against the administration at the size the rally gave it. And there were charges aired about the police shooting of two Belgian residents — in a city whose west end was Belgian, the gravest charge of the three, and the one the record reached carries at the least size.

The disposition the record holds: The electorate answered the campaign: Gaylor was re-elected — a voter writing to the News-Times in 1921 had voted for him "the last two times he has run for mayor" — and he held the office until the recount of 1921 ended it, in an election nobody disputed was honestly lost. Of the charges themselves, no adjudication stands in the record reached: no audit figure for the missing sum, no inquest or prosecution over the shooting, no ruling on the draft-board complaint. The offenses, if offenses they were, belong to the crime record, which does not carry them; the election belongs to the government record, which carries its result. The settling sources are the News-Times and Enterprise runs of November 1917 and the Board of Public Works and Public Safety minutes among the city council records at Notre Dame.

Sources:

1. South Bend News-Times, 6 November 1917 (Hoosier State Chronicles) — the Democratic closing rally at the Century Theater, Colpaert's candidacy, Parks and Bingham, and the campaign's money, conscription-board and police-shooting charges, as carried in the government record of this history.
2. The government record, Government — Gaylor's re-election and tenure, and the 1921 recount that ended it; the News-Times of 7 October 1921 for the "last two times" letter.