Lou’s View – Sept. 10, 2015

That Vault

By Lou Bernard

I’ve written about the courthouse before, a time or two. I’ve written about the four courthouses that have existed in Clinton County—The unused Moorhead courthouse, the Barker’s Tavern Courthouse, the Jerry Church courthouse, and the current one. I’ve written about the bell tower, and about the apparent curse that seems to have affected all of the early officials. What I’m saying is, when it comes to articles about the courthouse, I’ve been there.

But given the elections and the current political climate, I figured it was time for another article, this one about the vault in the county treasurer’s office.
I may have lost you on that one. What could the vault possibly have to do with politics?
Let me explain.
I found an article in my old favorite, the Clinton County Times, on May 20, 1904 entitled “That Vault.” The piece was more or less an editorial (It could be hard to tell with the Times) and was decrying the condition of the county vault, which it claimed was “unsafe, or at least an easy mark for a burglar.”

This was all in response to a piece the week before in the Clinton Democrat, another local newspaper, calling for repairs to the vault. You’d think the two papers could have agreed on that much, at least, but that would have been too easy. The Democrat, as the name suggests, had Democratic leanings. The Times was often just looking for a fight.

“The condition of the vault has not been changed since the Democrats went out of office,” said the column. “When a Democratic board of commissioners and the present editor of the Democrat, which paper now insists on a new vault, had charge of the county buildings, the matter was allowed to drift along as at present.”

The vault had been in need of repair for years. The Times claimed to have noticed it at least a few years before, when a largely Democratic slate of county commissioners were in office. When they’d questioned commissioners James Boone, Augustus Merrill, and J. Allison McCurdy about it, they’d been asked to keep it quiet, because it’s generally not considered smart to run a piece on the front page saying that the county vault is easy to break into. The Clinton Democrat knew, apparently, as well, and didn’t speak out much, either.

So, what happened? In 1903, more Republicans took office. H. Clark Stoner, William Gummo, and William Hanna gave the county government stronger Republican leanings, and the Democrat responded by pointing out how badly the vault needed repair. And then the Times leaped into the fray, claiming that the Democrat hadn’t done much complaining about it when their political party was in charge. And here you thought all the Bush/Obama stuff was irritating.

These days, the whole discussion would take place largely on Facebook and Twitter, and consist mainly of photographs with badly misspelled captions. But back then, the newspapers were the battleground. The Times pointed out that, yes, the vault did need repair, but the Democrat hadn’t cared much about it until they could safely blame the Republicans. And the Democrat claimed that, regardless, the vault needed work. And the Times responded by saying that, yes, it did, but the Democrat had been irresponsible to not say that very little money was kept in it during the day, and none at night. Which makes me wonder what the vault was for, and where they did keep the money. And then Donald Trump claimed that immigrants were going to break into the vault.

I’m just kidding about that last part. (Though it’s strangely plausible.) If Donald Trump had existed back then, his hair would have frightened horses along the street. But the debate raged for a while, the Times suggesting that the commissioners find the money to repair the vault instead of all the bridges they were fixing lately. The editorial considered that the work could probably be done for two thousand dollars.

I’m assuming the work was done eventually. Honestly, I don’t keep up with political debates on Facebook, much less newspapers from a century ago. So I got bored and didn’t look into it any further. I think it’s a safe assumption, however, that regardless of political party, the vault has been repaired since 1904, though I don’t know anyone who has tried to break into it lately.