100 Year Old Weblog

August 13, 1907

ANDERSON IS OUT.

SUCCEEDED AT THE WORKHOUSE

BY J. L. M'CRACKEN.

CONFIRMED BY THE COUNCIL.

NEW MAN HAS HAD EXPERI-
ENCE IN FEDERAL PRISON.

Was the Choice of Mayor Beardsley,
but Was Objected To by Politi-
cians -- They Had Other
Candidates to Fill
the Place.

J. L. McCracken becomes the superintendent of the city workhouse this morning, having been confirmed by the upper house of the council last night. This displaces Cash C. Anderson, who was appointed last by Mayor Neff, but who had been the superintendent under a previous mayor. Anderson is one of hte best known Republican ward politicians in the city. McCracken, his successor, has not been long enough in the state to register to vote. Mayor Beardsley nominated him on the strength of his seven years' record in Guthrie, O. T., as keeper of the federal jail there, and the indorsements which were given by Governor Frantz, United States District Attorney Speed and almost every other public official in the territory.

The vote on McCracken was unanimous. McCracken, with a brother-in-law, had managed the Hotel Densmore, Alderman Thompson's property, a year ago. He admitted that he had been in Kansas City only about two years, having arrived too late to register for the last election, but, he said, while he knew little about politics, he knew all about workhouses and jails. Alderman Thompson went to the mayor with the man and his credentials and the application was considered. That night the supreme judge of Oklahoma and all the federal officials there were asked to wire the mayor. While delegations from the Tenth ward and the Tigers were buttonholing the mayor to allow them to name the new man, Oklahoma politicians were telegraphing. The end was the mayor decided to take the workhouse out of local politics and gave it to the Oklahoma man.

"He will make a good superintendent," said Alderman Thompson last night. "He is a disciplinarian without being a martinet. His first work will be to separate the classes, which will be worth employing him. McCracken can tell a criminal from a casual in a day. He makes a reformatory of his jails. The poor fellow who is in jail for his first offense, or by accident or misfortune, will not be worked with regular offenders. He always earns the confidence and respect of his prisoners and at the same time he gets a maximum of work out of them. He will be found to be the proper man for the place."

Ex-Superintendent Anderson's resignation was called for by Mayor Beardsley, it being reported to him that Anderson had worked four city prisones on a ho use he is building. Anderson's plea was that a strike among some laborers had left his building exposed, and, having four idle prisoners, he had sent them out to work on the place.