from the Chandler Tribune


April 3, 1902
U. S. THOMPSON RESIGNED
It is said that U. S. Marshal Thompson has resigned, to get time to look after private business maters.
Ten to one his successor will be chosen from one of the towns located along the Santa Fe or Rick Island roads—and very probably from one of the three centrally located counties—Logan, Oklahoma or Kingfisher.

Guess It The First Time

Since the above announcement of the resignation of U. S. Marshal Thompson was put in type, the announcement is made from Washington that the president has named Bill Fossett as Thompson’s successor.

Fossett is from Kingfisher and has been Thompson’s chief deputy. The dispatches say that he had the endorsement of Flynn, Speed, Ferguson, Thompson and four members of the supreme court of the territory, and that it was on these endorsements that he received the appointment.

It may be that these endorsers are the Republican party of Oklahoma, in the eyes of te president, but they lack considerable of comprising the while party out here, and when the president becomes acquainted with the personal habits of Bill Fossett and the true inwardness of the opening of the new country, he will make up his mind that the big fight, on whose endorsement the appointment was made, are not very particular as to what sort of man they endorse for office.

It any of the men who endorsed him have ever received Bill Fossett at their homes and encouraged their wives and daughters to maintain terms of social intimacy with him or the females with whom he is said to openly associate, then they are not fit to fill the official positions, which they hold. And if his personal habits and associations are not of such character as to warrant them to receive him on terms of intimacy in their own homes, what excuse can they offer the president for recommending his appointment when they know that the policy of President Roosevelt has been to appoint only men of known decency and integrity.

It is said that Secretary Hitchcock was very much in favor of Fossett because “he makes such a good record in maintaining order at the opening of the new country last fall.” Well, if the “order” maintained at the opening by Fossett and his gang is pronounced good in Washington, it is to be wondered what they would deem bad order.

It is a notorious fact that among all the openings, which Oklahoma has ever had, the last was the vilest and characterized by greater lawlessness. At no to other opening has there been the same degree of crime permitted. Skin games were openly run, highway robberies took place daily…old soldiers and honest home seekers were openly robbed, money grabbed from their hands and after the marshals were appealed to, no effort was made to correct the wrongs perpetrated, but some insulting answer given. And the officers never made the least pretension towards checking all this until the people arose in their might and said they were going to seep the army of thugs and thieves off the face of the earth and then the greatest effort put forth by the marshals was to protect the thugs from the avenging hand of the indignant people. And these scenes were all enacted at Lawton to a great extent that any other point in the new country and it was at Lawton where Bill Fossett was in charge.

If the president will make in investigation on his own account, taking care to get statements from the common people who were there and not relying upon the statements made by any of the Big Eight, as to the order which Bill Fossett maintained at Lawton, and enquire of the rank and file of the Guthrie people as to Bill fossett’s open associations in that city, he will soon become convinced that the made a mistake in thinking that ‘Big eight” would not endorse any but good men for public positions and Bill Fossett won’t hold his official head longer than Daniels, of Arizona, did.

It is a shame that the Republican Party should be so loaded down as it has been with just such appointments as this one. The party everywhere else except in Oklahoma stands for good morals and decency, but in Oklahoma, if a few more such appointments are made it will soon be the byword of all the people except those who visit brothels and associate with the very lowest class of people know to the free and easy west.