Tuesday, Oct. 23, 1917
On October 19 a Record editorial posed twenty questions to Republican mayoral candidate George T. Morris. Despite his claim that “The Record refuses to print my answers,” they appear in today’s paper.
On October 20 Morris asked that we “publish in full my answers to your questions in as prominent a place as the questions appeared,” i.e. on the editorial page.
An editor answered that The Record “will not give carte blanche to any contributor,” but would publish Morris’s answers “in so far as the answers themselves are fair, concise and germane to occasion. It refuses, however, to permit Mr. Morris or anyone else to decide what is fair or germane.”
Morris accuses our paper of “cowardice and double dealing,” claiming that we intended to “separate, distort and mangle my reply.” He adds that “Every fairminded sober-thinking person knows that The Record only asked these questions hoping to embarrass me.”
Many of our questions are downright insulting. Question 3, for instance: “You asked in the common council whether the appointees to the dock commission were residents of Troy. Is a man of your age who is so ignorant regarding the leading citizens of his city competent for public office?”
Morris answers: “I am not ignorant of the leading citizens of Troy. I know them better than The Record does. But Mayor Burns is so partial to out-of-town talent that I feared that he might think it necessary to import a non-resident to Troy to act on the commission, in addition to the citizen members.”
A maverick fiscal conservative, Morris has criticized Democratic incumbent Cornelius F. Burns’s employment of “foreign” men in city government, especially water works superintendent John Diven. Challenged by The Record to name a native Trojan he’d appoint in Diven’s place, Morris writes, “I have not decided … but a native born Trojan it shall be.”
Asked what “sinecure” jobs he’d abolish, Morris answers that “The Democratic majority in the common council has refused to give me a list of the sinecures, but rest assured that I will hunt them up and drive them out when I become mayor.”
Challenged to suggest a better resolution to the city’s dispute with local railroads, Morris argues that he could have secured a better deal than Burns by “refraining from threatening a physical assault upon them personally, and by curbing a coarse tongue.”
Morris is often a minority of one on the common council. Asked whether he could cooperate with the council as mayor, he answers, “Perhaps not, but I have gained the support of my party associates … and the people will elect me.”