It’s the day set for Montana’s first state legislative assembly to convene, and Helena is in a political mess.
Incredibly, voters elected the same number of Republicans and Democrats to both the Senate and the House of Representatives. Both parties claim five disputed House seats.
The Republican House members opt to meet in a hall three-quarters of a mile away. The eight Republican Senators set up shop in the courthouse, as Lt. Gov. John Ezra Rickards is a Republican and can cast tie-breaking votes. The Democrat Senators refuse to show, even fleeing the city when arrest warrants are issued for them.
“The legislators and all the State officers are unable to draw pay and the various institutions are in need of funds,” a newspaper points out. “In fact, the whole machinery of the State is blocked.”
The deadlock will last the entire 90-day session, and nothing gets accomplished. Each party sends its own Congressional delegation to Washington, where a Republican Congress votes to seat the Republicans.
Nov. 27, 1922
Former state prison warden Frank Conley is exonerated of charges that he misappropriated $330,000 of state funds.
Among the charges dismissed by District Judge A.J. Horsky in Helena are that between 1908 and 1921, Conley had maintained 13 private automobiles at state expense, had used the prison ranch to feed his private livestock, and used over half a million tons of state coal to heat his home.
Conley, who’d been at the Deer Lodge prison since Montana’s territorial years, was removed as warden in 1921 by Gov. Joseph Dixon in a highly charged political move. Dixon appointed attorney T.H. McDonald to prosecute Conley for the alleged illegal appropriations.
According to Keith Edgerton, who’ll publish the book “Montana Justice” in 2004, McDonald stated before the three-month trial began: “No man can make reasonable inquiry into the history of the Montana State Prison without being appalled that such a state of affairs has been permitted to exist. Every avenue of curtailment of expenses has been diverted into the private treasury of the former warden and every industry at the prison has been prostituted to his enrichment.”
Horsky cited the murky relationship the state had with Conley during his years as warden and concluded there were no laws for the warden to break.
“Every act of Conley ... was in the interest of the state of Montana,” Horsky wrote.
Most of Conley’s counter claims against the state are dismissed as well, but the state has to pay costs of the expensive trial. Conley will remain in Deer Lodge, serving as the town’s mayor until 1929. He’ll die 10 years later.
Nov. 28, 1922
A 14-year-old girl in Livingston fires a shotgun into a crowd of sympathizers for a railroad shopmen’s strike. The crowd has gathered outside her family’s home.
She feels the strikers are threatening her father. The birdshot seriously injures two women and peppers six children. Her father, a worker in the railway shops, was severely stoned several days ago by strikers, and she thinks they are waiting to attack him again.
Some 95 miles down the line in Laurel, roughly 200 shopmen go on a rampage at a new billiards hall. They smash windows and fixtures, leaving the place in a shambles. The disturbance grew out of an incident last night when a shopman hit a union man over the head with a club.
Kim Briggeman can be reached at 523-5266 or by e-mail at kbriggeman@missoulian.com.
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