Disorderly Conduct?

Public men must be careful. If they become involved in any little fracas, or indulge in a little bit of drunken revelry, they are at once in a scandal which respectable papers, and yellow papers, and scurvy little gum-chewers' sheetlets retail to the public.

Last week Senator Robert N. Stanfield of Oregon touring the West with the Senate Public Lands Committee (vide supra) stopped at Baker, Ore., on personal business while his colleagues went on to Boise, Idaho. In Baker, Senator Stanfield became hungry and decided to eat.

From this common beginning the several stories of what then followed divericate. According to his account, as he had just finished eating he was suddenly placed under arrest, struck twice on the head so that his blood flowed, while the offending policeman deputized several onlookers to take him, unresisting, to jail. He charged that it was a "frame-up." According to the official accounts he was: 1) drunkenly throwing things around in the restaurant, or 2) being fed by two lady companions when arrested; he resisted and the policeman was obliged to deputize others present to aid in taking him to the station-house.

At any rate he was charged with being drunk and disorderly and bailed out for $50 while his friends telegraphed to newspapers in Portland that the proceeding was an outrage.

When the case came up for trial, the Senator had gone on his journey with the Senate Committee (vide supra). The only charge lodged was resisting an officer. In absence, his bail was forfeit, and the case closed. In Maryland, his home state, Senator Weller was arrested, for failing to have Maryland license plates on his automobile. Instead he had District of Columbia plates. The District fee is $1; the Maryland fee is $20.