POLITICAL NOTES: On Wildcat Creek

Kokomo, Ind. is located 125 mi. southwest of Kalamazoo, Mich, and 100 mi. southeast of Kankakee, Ill. In 1842 a trader named David Foster bought for a few dollars from Chief La Fontaine several hundred swampy acres in the Miami Indian reservation. Two years later Trader Foster donated 40 acres and built a log courthouse for a townsite on Wildcat Creek. The village took the name of Kokomo from an Indian who frequented the settlement. History sometimes describes Indian Kokomo as an honorable and courageous chief, sometimes as a common coon-hunting, root-digging, rum-loving, shiftless, abusive no-account.

In its early period, Kokomo followed the frontier tradition. There were shootings, barn-burnings, tar-&-featherings. Somebody stole the elaborate metal hitching rack from the courthouse. Somebody else burned down the courthouse. The railroad came to town in 1854 and 32 years later Kokomo had its industrial revolution with the discovery, in the vicinity, of natural gas. Kokomo changed from an agricultural depot to a thriving manufacturing centre. After Elwood Haynes made his first successful run with his horseless carriage on July 4, 1894 at Kokomo, the town became Indiana’s Detroit. There Haynes located his plant and there also was built the fleet, low-strung Apperson ‘”Jackrabbit.”

Kokomo started a decline in the early 1920’s. The gas had failed. The Haynes and Apperson factories closed. But Kokomo’s 32,000 inhabitants still point with pride to Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co.’s Kokomo plant, to a dozen metallurgical and machine works.

Kokomo’s most picturesque politician is Olin R. Holt, a thickset, debonair bachelor of 39 who wears horn-rimmed glasses and dresses to the nines. In 1924 he was out for Indiana’s Governorship with Ku Klux Klan support. Denied the Democratic nomination, he returned home to cultivate his Baptist and American Legion following, build a local machine. In 1930 his political activities were interrupted by the Department of Justice, which found that Lawyer Holt and the Howard County sheriff had organized a “Hoosier Protective Association” which assessed local bootleggers $3 a week in return for legal aid if and when they got into trouble. Mr. Holt was sent to Leavenworth in 1931 for 18 months, got out in seven. Indomitable Mr. Holt promptly went in for politics again, put himself up for Mayor last month and carried 30 of Kokomo’s 33 election districts.

But his imprisonment had cost Democrat Holt his civil rights, prohibited him from voting or holding office. Last week Democrat Franklin Roosevelt removed the obstacle by granting him a full pardon.