THE PRICE OF SENTIMENTALITY

Ms. Ferguson has surrendered the governorship of Texas in a blaze of notoriety. During her term of office she has evinced an almost complete lack of executive ability and a strange predilection in favour of prisoners, over 3000 of whom she has pardoned. By a probably unprecedented reverse English on petticoat government, she is said to have been misdirected by her husband, former governor James Ferguson.

It is not against "Ma" Ferguson that the blame should be laid for her freak administration, but rather against the people of Texas who supported her candidature. Mrs. Ferguson in seeking election was actuated by the very real desire to see her impeached husband vindicated. She made her personal grievance the chief plank in her platform. The sentiment of the Texas electorate was stirred, to the quick, and Mrs. Ferguson was elected. Her failure may be regarded as a rather salutary object lesson in the evils attendant upon unthinking balloting.