LIFE FULL OF THRILLS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20922, 11 July 1931, Page 2 (Supplement)

LIFE FULL OF THRILLS.

ALFALFA BILL'S ROMANCE.

GOVERNOR OF OKLAHOMA. HOW HE WAS ELECTED. LOAN OF FORTY DOLLARS. In the realm of State politics in America just now there is no more colourful figure than Alfalfa Bill Murray, Sage of Tishomingo, Governor of Oklahoma, who was elected with a majority of 100,000 votes in the teeth of the fiercest press and other opposition, with only 12 dollars (about £2 10s) in his pocket and no political organisation behind him, says the New York correspondent of the

Herald. Alfalfa Bill borrowed 40 dollars (about £8) from his home-town bank in Tishomingo to start Ids campaign. He n?ver owned a motor-car, so ho tramped from town to town. A sympathiser gave him a cheese, which he hawked across the State, subsisting on it, together jvith dry soda biscuit, as his electioneering diet. When he had only ten cents left-, and lie was on the point of quitting, a man from Mississippi, who read a newspaper account of his campaign, sent him 20'- dollars. • Millionaire candidates spent fortunes in opposing Alfalfa Bill, but he caught the mass mind, and held it; Here is' one instance of it: Oklahoma was hard hit by the drought. People were starving. The winter was a hard one. Alfalfa Bill gave a statement to the press that, when ho was elected Governor, he would rent out the executive mansion and live in the garage; that he would "fire" the gardener and turn the front lawn into a potato patch. The city -newspapers, not taking his candidature seriously, spread the tidings across their front pages. It was the season's best jpke. "Sod Floors and No Baths."

Alfalfa' Bill took counsel with himself. He retreated, saying he had spoken only in good," clean* fan. --But the story; once started/' was lliever";overtaken;-: . it swept over North' America, , The Oklahoman, immune to the new -.economic theories and red-suspenders, was completely captivated by the potatb patch! After that Alfalfa Bill's meetings were packed. The - newspapers, temporarily routed,-changed their attack. He was dubbed a Bolshevik. Even that failed. Then they attacked his family. An Oklahoma city paper with the largest "grassroot" circulation—they call a "hayseed" a "grassroot" down by the Kio Grande—detailed its best "sob sister" to probe his family, life. Alfalfa Bill had lived. <or"'.. years ; in; a house that had no bath. He never woro > a_ coat. house bad.; a sod floor, lie dipped* liis'_ finger' in the'butter to smear it op -his hotcakes. iHe' wore two pairs of trousers in cold weather!

Greatest ol All Majorities. 4

The "sob sister" forgot that nine out of ten Oklahomans had sod floors and nc bath in their homes. The deeper she got in her revelations the more she proved that Alfalfa Bill—the "Dad Wayback" of the south-west —was one of them. That settled-it! It brought him 50,000 more » yotes! v..,^ One newspaper stood by Alfalfa Bill. - It was the. Bluc o Valley Farmer, a decrepit country rag, so poor that it was'distributed. free. The editor knew a: man of destiny when he saw one. In return for his support Alfalfa Bill wrote an odd signed article for him. JvV>, Meantime, the nation heard of Alfalfa c ~ Bill. His- name was well known from the Great Lakes to the Gulf, from California to the -rock-ribbed coast of Maine. He swept into power with the# greatest majority ever v given a Governor of _ , s Oklaboma. ■ ' r . ._ In . Alfalfa Bill's veins runs the blood ;9J iCf , the fnoble Pocahontas, strained .-pretty ssJ"-f me with seven succeeding of if'cWScotch. . He ran away from home at to pick cotton. "I was twelve • •.'before I knew there was a President of J ".'the United States," he said. He went night school, paying for his education .. jvith-bags of potatoes he . had grow%. - , Indian Governor's Niece as Wife. Thus Bill got a degree in Arts and a teacher's certificate. Then he entered

■journalism,became a Parliamentary • re;porter in Texas, read;.law and.,was ad,jnitied,to ithe. Bar at the age of ; twentythree. ' Then, in 1898, arrayed in a * [Prince Albert and a stovepipe hat he made for Tishomingo, a bonanza town. He married the Chickasaw governor's •' ' niece,' becoming a citizen of the Indian nation. . 'Bill earned his pseudonym from preaching the benefits of alfalfa (lucerne) to the farmers. He was elected delegate to the constitutional convention that formed 'the State of Oklahoma, and served in the first legislature, where he made a name ■by introducing a law requiring every 1 -hotel to. "supply a 9ft. bed sheet that .would fold back at least 2£ft. Irrevei,erit foes dubbed him the "bedbug statesman," but the Sages of Tishomingo persevered. "If I could get the whole ■world to use 9ft. bed sheets, it would use up the whole cotton crop," he said. ■The bill .passed, and is the law to-day. • Several other States adopted it. Alfalfa Bill went to Washington as a 'Congressman in 1912, but was defeated *in 1916 because he pooh-poohed the Wil•Bon campaign slogan, "He kept us out of War." "The Joys of Oklahoma." Disgusted and embittered Bill went to 'South America and founded a colony of Oklahomans in Bolivia. When war broke out there, his comrades deserted him. He returned in 1929. An Oklahoma minstrel thus recorded his return: — Bolivian brakes, lagoons and snakes. And swamps with foul aroma, Made Bill repine for Auld Lang Syne, And the joys of Oklahoma. Honest to a degree, at war with graft • mid crime, Alfalfa Bill .sponsored a " measure to vote half a million dollars - (£200,000) for a legislative dormitory on '*• the Capitol grounds to keep members of the Assembly from becoming victims of gambling houses, "speakeasies" and dens of infamy during their stay in the Capi- ' to). Out in the "grassroots," his constituents are now clamoring for him to : run for the position of President of the United States;