USA > South Dakota > Who's who in South Dakota, Vol. I > Part 14
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(3). Poor man superceded by rich. - Nothing equals a state- wide (or nation-wide; we shall perhaps soon have one) primary in gradually taking the government out of the hands of the bon- est poor and placing it in the hands of the selfish rich. Wiscon- sin and Illinois were two of the first states to enact the state- wide primaries. Wisconsin got a $107,000 United States senator, and Illinois got a $100,000 one. The principle of the primary is right, but it will always prove a humbug until it places office- seeking on such a basis that it cannot be auctioned off.
These statistics have not been introduced herein for the pur- pose of reopening at this time a discussion of the merits or de- merits of the primary, but to vindicate the position on its opera- tion taken hy Mr. Elrod. The recorded facts, as well as his prophecy, show that it produces a "government of the (rich), by the (rich) and for the rich)."
ECONOMICAL GOVERNOR
Be it said to the everlasting eredit of Mr. Elrod that he was
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a sensible, economical governor. In his 1905 message to the leg- islature, he said :
"I beg of you, pass no law that will make it necessary to in- crease taxes, rather set an example that will lead to tax reduc- tion. Create no new offices unless absolutely needed; they will be a drain upon the treasury which the tax payers ought not to be called upon to supply. We must keep the state progressive but at the same time we must administer her affairs with a scru- pulous regard for strictest economy. Conservative administra- tion protects capital and insures work for the laborer. *
"In a word, this legislature, composed of business men, should keep appropriations within the revenues. You should manage this business intrusted to you by your constituents the same as you would your farm, your bank or your store. In plain and simple words, you should not contract debts without provid- ing the money with which to pay them."
As a result of Honest Sam's economical policy, the state taxes in 1905, the first year of his administration, amounted to $879,829 22. In 1906. they amounted to only $442,804.76. Com- pare his two years with those of 1909 and 1910 when the state taxes for the first year were $1,279,081.24, and for the second year (the non-legislative year when they should have been cut in two) $1,345,899 62. For the years 1905-6 they totalled $1,322, - 633.98; while for 1909-10, they reached $2,624.917 86 or just
double. And in addition to this showing, the charitable and pena! institutions were so wisely handled during Elrod's admin- istration that, despite the small appropriation which they re- ceived, they turned back into the state treasury, at the close of his term, $45.628.11.
AS A PRIVATE CITIZEN
Sam Elrod is a man who has an ideal home life. Two years after locating in Clark, he had prospered so well that he slipped back to Coatsville, Indiana, and married Miss Mary E. Matsen.
The Elrods have two children, one, a daughter, Miss Bar- bara, aged 18, who graduated this year from the Clark high school, and a son, Arthur Mellette Elrod (named after our first state governor), aged 14.
The year of his graduation from De Paw, at Greencastle, Indiana, Mr. Elrod united with the M. E. church and he has since remained a devout and consistent member.
Defeated for the republican nomination for Congress by Charlie Burke in 1898 defeated for governor by Coe I. Crawford, and again by R. S. Vessey, he has tasted the bitter with the
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sweet, yet he has always retained his poise and been loyal to his friends. When told that he could gain his political prestige by breaking loose from Kittredge, Martin, Burke, Herreid, et al, he cooly replied, "I have come up with these men, I am willing to go down with them."
Sam has prospered immensely. Today his little shack has given way to one of the finest homes in the state, where he and his family reside and enjoy to the fullest extent the blessings of life. And he is charitable also. Not long since he gave $500 to one institution.
Such has been the varied career of one of our state's worthy political sons. May the future crown him with a just reward!
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E. T. PEIRCE
A BLACK HILLS' PIONEER
Frontier life in the Black Hills !- the latter seventies; the lays when General Custer met his tragic death on the Little Big Horn at the hands of the wily Sioux; the days when many a west- rn ruffian who had violated frontier ethics, attended his own 'neck-tie party," without questioning the invitation he had re- eived, and died with his boots on, without the quiver of a mus- le; the days when the red-skinned warrior fell upon white emi- 'rant trains and left the latters' naked skulls to bleach in the ot mountain sun; the days when Wild Bill (Harry Hickok), the haster gunfighter of them all, who, single handed and alone, rmed with a shotgun, several revolvers and a bowie knife, illed in quick succession and almost in unison all nine of Jake IcCandles' band of outlaws who attacked him, but who later lost is own life in Deadwood at the hands of a cowdardly cur, Jack IcCall, who dared not use his gun in the open, but who slipped oto a vacant room, stealthily opened an old door that led into he room where Hickok was sitting, and shot him in the back; he days when "Calamity Jane" (Mary Cannery), the most noted nd adventuresome female dare-devil in all history, a woman who ought for Indian fights, lynching bees and ruffian mix-ups with greater fiendishness than her contemporaneous frontiersmen unted for gold, who camped on the trail of Wild Bill's slayer ntil she avenged his death, and who now lies in an almost un- marked grave beside that of Wild Bill amid the whispering pines n the sun-baked slope of White Rocks in front of the city of deadwood, 5,200 feet above the sea-ah! these were also the stir- ing pioneer dasy of "Doc" Peirce.
Peirce came to the Black Hills in February, 1876, and set- ed on a claim along French creek. He sluiced three days, got fteen cents in gold and contracted rheumatism.
Although an eastern lad by birth, Doc could handle a gun ith the best of them. To act as sheriff in a western mountain
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country in those strenuous days when the only law was a code of unwritten border ethics, required a man of great courage, of poise, of skill and of some degree of intelligence. Such a man was Doc Peirce. The counties of Custer and Forsythe were; united for civil regulation -if such a thing were possible. Peirce was chosen sheriff in 1877 by the gold seekers who were prospect- ing in that region.
But, trouble arose. Under the federal law the territorial governor had a right to ap- point all the county officers. He refused to recognize the election of Peirce and his col- leagues, and instead he ap- pointed political tenderfeet from the east. The frontiers- men around Custer got angry, elected a new set of officers of their own and ordered those to vacate who had been ap- pointed by the governor. They refused. Then some unwrit- ten history took place.
A commission was also sent out by the governor to locate the Black Hills' county seats. They were a bunch of professional grafters. They demanded half of each town- site that was given a county E. T. PEIRCE seat. The towns already established as county headquarters, al refused. These political sleuths then moved the county seat of Lawrence county from Deadwood to Crook City; the county sea of Pennington county from Rapid City to Sheridan, a mining camp; and the county seat of Custer county from Custer to Hay ward, a little town across the line in Pennington county, thereby leaving Custer county without any legitimate county seat and giving Pennington county two.
There were not many people left in Custer during the winter of '77-8. But those that were left were a bunch of fair-minded hard-headed pioneers who knew litte about territorial law, but who were generously endowed with a supply of that uncommon kind of sense -common sense. Above all they loved fair play whether in a shooting fracas or in the civil administration o
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their affairs. Doc Peirce was one of them. To their way of democratic reasoning he was their legitimate sheriff.
Now, these carpet-bag politicians had taken the records of Custer county over to the new county seat which they had in- geniously located in Pennington county. The people of Custer county wanted them back.
"How can we get them?" they said to each other.
"I'll tell you," said Sheriff Peirce, "we'll. simply go over and get them at the point of a gun. I'll lead! If we can get them without a fight, so much the better; if with a fight, a fight goes, but here we go for our records!"
They got them -got them without a fight, but they got their "foot in it." A slab-sided, shabby-bearded, imported United States mulligrub, seeing that resistance meant bloodshed, whis- pered to his colleagues and said : "Let 'um take them: but take that cigar box there that we get our mail in and set it in the register of deeds office." The fellow did it.
Doc Peirce and his confederates nad to walk past this empty little box that smelt so strongly after a large Virginia weed, to get the records. In a short time after they had returned to Cus- ter they were surprised one day by an imported deputy United States marshall, clad in a brilliant uniform, mounted on an im- ported steed, who served warrants on them to appear before United States Marshall Leonard Bell of Vermillion, who was then at Rapid City.
They went to Rapid City, were bound over to the next term of court, each one under $500 bail-their bondsmen being re- quired to justify to double this amount. Impossible, of course, in that new country, to get such bondsmen, without going a long distance horseback or on foot. Bell saw the trap and he refused to hear the case. But the fellows had been resourceful enough to foresee that Bell might balk, so they brought with them as a substitute an Arizona sheep herder who held a commission from Uncle Sam .
This fellow handed it out to them in true western style. Peirce was jumping around like a chicken with its head cut off, trying to get some one to ride to Deadwood to secure bail, so that he and his men could go home.
Presently an excited fellow rushed up to Peirce and screamed : "The jail is filled with desperadoes, one under death sentence. They are trying to break out, and the authorities want you to come quick and help to man the jail!"
Peirce, true to his instincts for a fight, rushed to the jail, stepped in -the door swung shut, and he had unwittingly fallen
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into a neat trap. The next night, Fred T. Evans of Sioux City, came along. He knew Peirce, so he went on his bond and let him out.
As Peirce left the jail he said to those who had entrapped him. "I'll come back!" They hooted him.
In due time they were brought to trial. The late Frank Washabaugh, at that time clerk of the courts, read the indict- ment: "Entering a United States postoffice with the intent of committing larceny and other depredations." The cigar box had done its work well.
Under that indictment, only one man could get a hearing, and the late Granville C. Bennett, the first Black Hills' judge. dismissed the case when it came before him for trial.
But Peirce was under bond for trial. So he walked back to Custer, fifty miles, gave away what goods he had left in a little store there. resigned his position as sheriff of Custer county, walked back again to Rapid City, went into partnership in a hotel at Rapid City with Dan J. Stafford. of Yankton, was elected sheriff of Pennington county, and on January 1, 1881, he walked down to the old jail wherein he had once been confined, demanded the keys, as an officer of the law, and said soberly, "Old Peirce always keeps his word."
LINEAGE
Ellis Taylor Peirce descended from Penn Quakers. He was born in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, April 24, 1846.
'Tis said the greatest help to success in life is being born well. 'Twas true of Samuel of Old Testament fame, 'twas true of Daniel Webster, 'tis true of Bryan and of many others. Doc Peirce was born well. The "Taylor" in his name discloses his connection with Bayard Taylor, the noted journalist and traveler.
CIVIL WAR EXPERIENCE
After graduating from the state nor.nal school at Millers- ville, Pennsylvania, in 1863, at the age of seventeen, he joined the Union army, and was assigned to Nevin' Battery, Pennsyl- vania Light Artillery.
Near the close of the war he joined the 39th Missouri Mounted Infantry. This was the regiment that the murderous Quantrell massacred at Centralia, Missouri, September 27, 1864, only four men escaping. Young Peirce was one of these four.
REFORMATION
A monument now stands where brave Custer fell. The bones of Wild Bill and of Calamity Jane are separated only by a few
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feet of clay. The Black Hills has become a populous region. The dusky Sioux warrior has vacated his haunts for government reserves. "Necktie parties." have been superceded by the strong arm of the law. The onward march of civilization has thrown its mantle of charity and peace over the ramparts of the past The early pioneers who hewed out the west are nearly all gone. But "Doc" Peirce remains with us still.
At present he runs a barber shop on Minnekahata avenue, in Hot Springs, South Dakota. No one who knows him (and nearly everybody does) ever thinks of passing his door without saying "Hello! Doc." He is still strong and rugged and bids fair to reach the century mark.
Not long since a loud-mouthed fellow sitting in a hotel in Hot Springs, was relating reminiscences of the Black Hills, and heralding the part he had taken, when he was interrupted by Peirce who asked:
"When did you come to the Black Hills?"
"In '81," said the fellow.
"You poor tenderfoot," said Doc; and then everybody lit their accustomed cigars and enjoyed the fellowship of a happy evening while Doc Peirce entertained them with pioneer "stories" of the Black Hills, chief among which was his story of a
HOLD-UP
He told of how the old stage that plied between Hot Springs and Deadwood in the early days left the former place one morn- ing away back in the seventies and started for Dead wood via Custer. There were in the coach some eight or nine persons, among whom was a hunch-back Jew and a desperate-looking ne- gro.
Toward night-fall, not far from Custer, the driver stopped to water his horses at a mountain spring. Everybody got out and began to stroll around. Presently the big burly negro stepped up in front of the Jew and pulling out of his pocket a long six- shooter which he placed in close proximity to the Jew's nose, said ot him in pretty firm tones, "Give me your money!"'
"Vel," said the Jew, "how much secoority vil you give?"
"Never mind about the security!" exclaimed the negro, "give me your money at once or you are a dead Jew!"
"Vel, can't you vait until ve git to Deadvud and have Shon Oppenheimer go on your bond?" interrogated the Jew. "BANG!"
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AN ELOQUENT DIVINE
The ministers of the Gospel! good, bad and indifferent, God bless 'em all! They are the most self-sacrificing people that ever trod the earth. True; some of them -even in South Dakota- have missed their "calling," or else had a little piece of flutter- ing wax adhering to one of their tympanums when the"' call" came, and consequently misunderstood it. Nevertheless, they are making their sacrifices with the rest, and they deserve even greater blessings for it; for the struggle is just that much the harder.
Again they have robbed a lot of other professions to com- plete their own ranks. Seventy-two per cent of all the preachers in South Dakota were formerly teachers. From spanking other people's children for an inadequate salary, they were "called" to a more passive job at a still lighter salary. Hence, the sac rifice! Some of them, like Reverend Wilber, of Hot Springs, were formerly prosecuting attorneys. While pleading for penal- ties to be pronounced upon accused law violaters, before the bar of men, they heard a "call" to plead for forgiveness for the same "bunch," before the bar of God
Unsurpassed in eloquence, in spirituality and in pleading, among this class of men in South Dakota, is the eloquent Dr. John W. Taylor, pastor of the First M. E. church of Aberdeen. Taylor is a masculine man -not a "sissy" with a neat bow tie and a girlish voice; abdomen so slender that his very looks sug- gests a herring; hair parted in the middle, and hands well-kept and dainty white. Oh! no; not for a minute !-- not for Taylor! He is a rugged, manly fellow with a powerful physique, brawny hands, and a deep bass voice that can be heard for a mile. Just the kind of a fellow needed for the pulpit, -a man that the "boys" will tie up to and feel that he is their leader, instead of being merely a guant, hungry, chicken eater.
In the pulpit, Taylor is a power. Why? Well, because he
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made great preparation for his work; because of his personality and because of his common sense. Regardless of what was taught him in the theological school, Taylor has been out of school long enough, and has rubbed up against the world hard enough, to know that religion is not something to die by, but rather some- thing to live by; that it has as much. if not more, to do with a man this side of the grave than on the other; that while you are pleading with young men for their souls' salvation, you must re- member their bodies' salvation; that the body is the probationary home of the soul; that unless you struggle to save the body, you lose the soul, because the body is returned to dust and the soul passes out of it beyond human control.
For this resaon, Dr. Taylor has a swimming pool and a gym- nasium in the basement of his church, for the young men of his church, and for any others that care to act decently and who may be influenced by their surroundings and some day become prod- ucts of the church. Some sense to this, surely! So important to him are these physical needs of his young men, that the church over which he presides, maintains a young man at a salary of $100 per month, just to guide the boys -the future elders of the church-in their physical development. Some one said, "When a boy goes wrong a man dies." True! and Taylor's plan keeps them going right, and the man is saved by training the boy.
This is what-the church is demanding nowadays, a practical preacher, a fellow who hasn't forgot that he himself was once a boy; who knows how to reach boys, how to entertain them, how to attract them to church, how to keep them within his own grasp. Such a man is Taylor.
The Reverend Doctor Taylor is one of our adopted sons. He was born at Simcoe, Province of Ontario, Canada, June 10, 1862. He received his early education in the Simcoe public schools. Later he graduated from Port Rowan Collegiate Institute, and then taught school for two years at Port Ryerse, Ontario.
Having united with the Methodist church at the impression- able age of seventeen, he became intensely interested in religious work. The teacher gave way to the preacher and young Taylor drifted over to Otsego. Michigan, where he took up pastoral work, succeeding at that place the learned Dr. Samuel Weir, of Mitchell, who by the way, is also a Canadian product.
The silly rules of the M. E. church, which in a more enlightened day have at last been abandoned, and which provided that a pas- tor could only stay on one charge for three years, put Taylor out at the end of this period, so he went to Evanston, entered Garrett Biblical Institute and graduated in 1892 as one of the three stars
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of the class of that year, -Nicholson, Montgomery and Taylor. Specializing for a short time at Northwestern University, and after preaching for two months at Almont, Michigan, Dr. Taylor accepted a call to First Church, Laramie, Wyoming, -the seat of her state university. By this time younger blood had gotten into the counsels of the M. E. church and the pastorate of a church had been increased to five years. Taylor stayed the limit. He also did work in the university at Laramie and graduated with the class of 1896. In 1904, Dakota Wesleyan at Mitchell, honored him with his "D. D."
After leaving Lar- amie, Dr. Taylor went to Utah, where he preached two years at Salt Lake City and two years at Ogden. Coming east- ward again, he accepted a call at another univer- sity town, Vermillion, South Dakota. His scho- lastic preparation and his oratorical powers make him a great favorite in a city wherein there is lo- cated an institution for higher education.
At Vermillion he made good, and his ser- vices were everywhere in demand Churches made bids for him. Aberdeen, with the same nerve that has characterized her commercial life, outbid the rest and got him. Wise city! She never made a better invest- ment.
DR. JOHN W. TAYLOR
The church has at last removed its "tenure of office" and Taylor has already stayed by his present job for eight years, although offered the presidency of two universities, meantime.
He started in at Aberdeen with a membership of 250 and an audience of 150. Today his menbership is 700. The old church
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has been superceded by an $85,000 structure, with a seating ca- pacity of over 1,200. By reason of the details of its arrangement. and because of its elaborate equipment, this church is regarded as the best in the central west.
When it came to dedicate it, so we have been told, Taylor did not desecrate the Sabbath by running a commercial bluff of beggars' humiliation; but quietly and patiently and effectually, he went about the city, in advance, secured sufficient pledges for the liquidation of the entire debt, and when the hour for dedi- cation came, it was spent as God would have it-in prayer and song and thanksgiving. Splendid example!
RELIGIOUS BELIEFS
Going into the details of Taylor's beliefs along theological lines, as we have been per nitted to conclude (possibly from some view- points, erroneously) from the few times we have heard him preach, we think he feels as did Cowper when he broke loose in a fit of poetic rage and declared :
"Of all the arts which sagacious dupes invent,
To cheat themselves and gain the world's assent,
The worst is Scripture warped from its intent."
He believes with McCauley that, "Whosoever does anything to deprecate Christianity is guilty of high treason against civili- zation and mankind."
Personally, we have always felt that you cannot have true morality without religion; that mere negative badness ends only where positive goodness begins: that morality, divorced. from re- ligion, is a satanic humbug.
Taylor is in exact accord with these views; hence, we like. him. We reinforce them with a quotation from Daniel Webster's great Fourth of July oration: "To preserve the government we must also preserve morals. Morality rests on religion; if you destroy the foundation, the superstructure must fall." And again we add the words of Washington in his immortal farewell address: "Of all dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. * * Reason and experience doth forbid us to expect that national moralization can prevail in the exclusion of religious principle."
FATHERLAND OF ANGELS
One beautiful Sabbath evening, in the springtime, a few years since, Dr. Taylor announced at his morning service, as well
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as through the Aberdeen papers, that his subject for the evening address would be "The Fatherland of The Angels."
A large number of traveling men, (among them the writer) went to hear the discourse.
Here was a theme to Taylor's liking. Nature had fitted him with an imagination and equipped him with a vocabulary suffic- iently adequate to handle it. He rose to the occasion. After an eloquent prayer that seemed to surcharge the very ether with spirituality, Taylor, in a tragic attitude, with upturned face, and with uplifted arms. gracefully inclined, took hold of the curtains of heaven, pulled them gradually apart, pinioned back their tapering folds with the stars of night, and gave his sym- pathetic audience a glimpse into spirit realm.
Using his brush-tipped tongue he painted against the king- dom's sky images of stately colonades dividing spacy corridors on whose walls hung highly-colored paintings of the Saints of Old; streets of gold enclosed with jewel-laden curbs of silver; on and on he carried the angelic scenery up a succession of heights that steepened as they ascended until at last, in the perspective on the far distant horizon of peace, he unveiled the illumined cross. Above and around it the gifted orator, while his breathless hear- ers sat spell-bound with expectancy, painted silvery-hued pictures of white-winged, hovering angels in mryiad numbers.
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