To Atlanta

Albert Barnes Anderson, Judge of (the U. S. District Court in Indianapolis, was appointed by President Roosevelt in 1902. A few years later, after a decision which displeased the President, Mr. Roosevelt said that Judge Anderson was "either a fool or a knave." In 1912 he sentenced a group of labor leaders to prison for long terms on conviction of conspiracy to transport explosives in passenger trains. In 1919 it was he who issued an injunction against coal guilty of forging hundreds of fraudulent notes. He is guilty of obtaining strikers. Last week he added to his reputation by saying from the bench:

"I have never seen so many felonies committed by one individual. . . Here is a man who devised a scheme to defraud, and carried it on almost entirely by the use of the mails. He has testified that he wrote 2,500 letters, and, if so, he is guilty of violating the statutes 2,500 times. He is money under false pretenses. He has violated not only written laws but laws of his own conscience as well."

The man of whom Judge Anderson spoke was the Governor of Indiana, Warren T. McCray.

Eight months previous the Governor had called a meeting of his creditors, asserted that he could not meet his debts although he was not insolvent. Said he at the time: "Boiled down to one fact, you find a farmer, a landowner, who is caught after three disastrous years in the farming business. I could not collect my bills and found myself unable to meet some of my obligations."

Events began to happen, slowly at first, then more swiftly. The creditors took charge of his assets. He resigned as President of a bank, which went to the wall. He was investigated by a grand jury and indicted for larceny, embezzlement, forgery, obtaining money under false pretenses and issuing false financial statements. Subsequently, the Post Office Department investigated him and he was indicted by a Federal Grand Jury for using the mails to defraud.

He was first tried on the state charges and the jury disagreed. Last week his trial on the Federal indictments was completed. It appeared that, as he became more and more involved in his financial tangle, McCray had resorted to more and more dubious expedients. He admitted on the witness stand that he had signed the names of other people and of non-existent corporations to notes which he afterwards sold as valid obligations. The amount of these notes was about $1,000,000. He insisted, however, that he had no intent to defraud because he had indorsed the notes in his own name and was personally responsible for them.

The jury took just 13 minutes to return a verdict of guilty. Judge Anderson committed him to jail at once. Next morning he went to the State House under guard, cleared his desk, pardoned a boy sentenced to a life term for patricide, and wrote:

"I hereby resign the office of Governor of the State of Indiana."

The resignation was to take effect at 10 a. m. the following day. At that hour Mr. McCray came before Judge Anderson for sentence. He had been convicted on ten counts. The Judge sentenced him to five years' imprisonment and $1,000 fine on each count--the last nine of the terms to be served concurrently i. e., 10 years in prison and $10,000 fine.

At three-thirty in the afternoon, the former Governor of Indiana and one Robert Lambert, 23, convicted of conspiracy to steal automobiles, were en route for Atlanta penitentiary. On the journey Lambert, handcuffed, dived through a washroom window and escaped.

Before he entered the prison walls Mr. McCray gave his guards and newspapermen a meal at a lunch counter, tipped the waiter $1, and, when asked to remark on his own case, replied.

"First let me comment upon a much startling and shocking story. I mean this tragic tornado which has increased the death toll in your south. My heart goes out to those who lost their loved ones and their homes."

Two years ago Governor McCray visited Atlanta to attend the Southeastern Fair and took away some blue ribbons for his fine Hereford cattle.