Samuel M. Ralston

Samuel Moffett Ralston (December 1, 1857 – October 14, 1925) was an American politician of the Democratic Party who served as the 28th governor of the U.S. state of Indiana and a United States senator from Indiana.

Born into a large impoverished family, he took many jobs as a child including working in a coal mine. He taught school and studied law, becoming a prominent state lawyer before becoming active in his local politics. Because he served during the state's 100th anniversary he is sometimes called the Indiana's "Centennial Governor". During his tenure as governor, he was responsible for implementing many Progressive Era reforms in the state and put down the Indianapolis streetcar strike of 1913. He gained the support of the Indiana Ku Klux Klan for his anti-Catholic political positions, and with their support was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1922. Ralston had become popular among the national Democratic Party as an early front-runner for the presidential nomination in 1924, but he dropped out of the race because of his failing health, and died the next year.

Early life

Family and background

Samuel Ralston was born near New Cumberland, Ohio, on December 1, 1857, the second child of John and Sarah Ralston. He was of Scottish descent, his great-grandparents immigrated to Pennsylvania in about 1760. His older brother John had died at age three, shortly before Samuel's birth. In 1865 the Ralston family moved to Owen County, Indiana, where John purchased a large farm and began to raise livestock. His boyhood home, the Moffett-Ralston House, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.

Ralston, and his three brothers and four sisters, worked on the family farm to help the family subsist. The family suffered from financial difficulty and lost their farm in 1873, they then moved to Fontanet, Indiana. He took up employment in a butcher shop and later worked in a coal mine to help provide income for the family. His father later opened a butcher shop of his own returning the family to prosperity.

While attending college he met Jennie Craven and began courting her. The couple later married on December 30, 1889. Together they had three children, Emmet, Julian, and Ruth. The family was Presbyterian and attended church regularly. Ralston had also become a member of the Young Men's Democratic Club and took an interest in politics and began stumping on behalf of Democrat candidates.

Governor

In 1912 Taggart again supported Ralston's nomination for Governor, and this time succeed and was nominated on March 17. Ralston received the endorsement of numerous groups in the state, including the women's suffrage movement and many churches.

Indianapolis riots

One of the first events Ralston became involved in was a strike by the street car workers in Indianapolis that began in October. The strike was called on the week of the city elections and Republicans accused the strikers of trying to prevent them from voting. The union demanded the passage of a law to better protect what they believed to be their rights and wanted the governor to call a special session of the Indiana General Assembly to pass such a bill. The strike quickly grew into a citywide riot as the growing mob began to attack police, business leaders, and public officials. Business leaders and Mayor of Indianapolis Samuel Shank demanded the governor call out the army and end the strike, but the unions threatened violence if that happened. On November 5 Ralston finally called out the entire Indiana National Guard and put the city under martial law. At noon on the 6th, the strikers and their sympathizers gathered around the Indiana Statehouse and began chanting a demand that the troops leave the city. Ralston exited the building and spoke to the crowd offering to withdraw the troops if the strikers would go back to work and negotiate peacefully. He offered concessions and promises that convinced the strikers of his good intentions, which effectively ended the strike that day. After several days passed, and it became apparent that the strike was truly over, he demobilized the guard.

When the General Assembly convened, Ralston was able to have several acts passed that led to improved working conditions for many workers in the state. Among the laws he advocated and passed were acts banning the sale of narcotic drugs for the first time, a minimum wage, conservation measures to prevent deforestation, incentives to encourage development of the livestock industry, free vaccinations for several prevalent diseases, and aid in helping the blind find work. His signature work though was his target of the tenement slums in the state. He successfully lobbied for funds to provide running clean water, children's playgrounds, and several other improvements to the living conditions of the urban poor. The final bill he signed empowered the state police to close the brothels in the state, which effectively ended any forms of legal prostitution in Indiana. and “genuinely liberal in thought and action” Ralston presided over a wide range of progressive social reforms during his time as governor. Thomas R. Marshall, Ralston's predecessor, had attempted to have a new constitution adopted but his plans were ruled unconstitutional by the Indiana Supreme Court who ruled a constitutional convention needed to be held. Ralston also favored creating a new constitution to enact numerous reforms that under the present constitution would have been illegal. To accomplish this goal, he began urging the General Assembly to call a constitutional convention. A bill was passed by the assembly in 1913 to permit the state to adopt a new constitution. The measure had to be submitted to a statewide referendum, as required by the current constitution, before the convention could be held. Outside of Indianapolis and the few industrial cities, there was little support for reform for industrial workers, the majority of the state's population was still rural. When the public voted in 1914, the measure was defeated, 235,140–338,947.

His two projects with the longest impact on the state were the Utilities Law and the Vocational Education Act. Ralston advocated and obtained significant increases in education spending and began a system of free vocational education for the state's school students. The regulations he enacted on the public utility companies began a process that would take running water and electricity to the entire state. Other important measures were passed during his term including Indiana's first worker's compensation program, the creation of the state's primary election system, and the creation of an inheritance tax.

He also made substantial contributions to the state's financial situation. The state had been in debt since the start of the internal improvements in the early 1830s and had twice verged on total bankruptcy, in 1847 and 1863, and once entered a partial bankruptcy in 1841. Although the state was not in immediate financial risk, it was still heavily burdened by debt. Ralston was insistent on paying off the state's debt and creating a rainy day fund, and advocated amending the constitution to prevent the state from borrowing funds in the future. Through a combination of spending cuts and increased taxation and with the support of the General Assembly, the government was able to pay off the entire state debt and create a $3.76 million surplus fund by the time he left office. The Klan was one of the most influential groups within the state at the time, and it reprinted and circulated his speech. The Klan's support of Ralston was one of its most forceful attempts to have a candidate elected in Indiana, as it feared the Republican candidate who had publicly condemned the organization. The Klan fell apart in 1926—the year after Ralston's death—after a scandal, revealing that the majority of Indiana's politicians, including Ralston, had ties to the Klan. He took up his Senate seat on March 4, 1923. In the senate he advocated the adoption of the Mellon tax plan, which was effectively a wealth redistribution plan. After the Klan became more powerful than ever in 1924, Ralston fought against efforts to condemn the Klan by name in both the Indiana and national Democratic platforms. Due in part to Ralston's efforts, the anti-Klan plank at the national Democratic convention failed by one vote. At the state convention, Ralston's efforts succeeded at preventing the Klan from technically being denounced by name in the platform. However, the state Democratic party still passed a plank that declared that the Indiana Republican Party had ""been delivered into the hands of an organization which has no place in politics and which promulgates doctrines which tend to break down the safeguards which the Constitution throws around every citizen" and that 1920s Indiana Republicans were "repungant" to Civil War/Reconstruction Republicans such as Abraham Lincoln and Oliver Morton.

Ralston later revealed that due to his failing health he did not believe he was fit to become president. His steadily worsening health led to his death on October 14, 1925, at his home near Indianapolis. He was buried in the Oak Hill Cemetery in Lebanon.