A SENATOR ACQUITTED TRIAL AND VINDICATION.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 76, 31 March 1914, Page 8

A SENATOR ACQUITTED TRIAL AND VINDICATION.

(rww oon own correspondent.) SAN FRANCISCO, 3rd March. Senator Thomas P. Gore, of Oklahoma, one of the most brilliant and useful members of the Upper House of Congress, is a blind man. He has just gone, through a trying ordeal and vindicated himself from a serious charge in a manner that has won for him congratulations and commendation from all parts of the United States. Incidentally the affair has shown once more to what extremes of villainy disappointed political opposition will sometimes descend. A woman named Mrs. Minnie E. Bond, hailing from' tho same State as the Senator (Oklahoma), visited his apartments in Washington. She afterwards accused him of assault, and sued for 50.000 dollars damages. The case has just been tried in Oklahoma City. In ten minutes the jury found that the evidence wholly exonerated Senator Gore. The defence was not a,lone a denial of the charges, but a counter-claim thafc the suit was instigated by political opponents who had failed in their attempts to secure political jobs under the Federal Democratic Administration, of which Senator lSore is a supporter. That such a piot existed was clearly shown. Mrs. Bond herself had become embittered against the Senator because of his refusal to recommend her husband for a political position, and practically everybody else who testified against Senator Gore were either disappointed applicants for jobs or persons closely associated with such. A peculiar circumstance was that two of these men testified that they were in the room unknown to the Sena* tor and witnessed the attack. The jury utterly disbelieved their testimony. Among the major trials of the life of a member of Congress is the constant importunity to which he is subjected by applicants for appointment to the Federal Service. In the nature of things, he must refuse ninety-nine out of a hundred of the applicants. Itis not often, however, that the disappointed ones resort to such a vicious plot to gain revenge.