CantonRep.com | The Repository | Thursday, Nov. 26, 2015 | A3
On this day in Repository history:
Nov. 26, 1919
Today’s page — another
in a series of key pages in
The Repository’s 200-year
history — is sponsored by:
Governor removes Mayor Poorman
“Charles W. Poorman has been ordered permanently removed as chief executive of
the city of Canton.”
Those were the words on the front page of The Evening Repository on Nov. 26,
1919, that reported the removal of the city’s mayor by Gov. James A. Cox.
A hearing before the governor had resulted in Poorman being “convicted of gross
neglect of duty through failure to properly maintain order during the steel strike
here during September and October.”
Poorman already had been suspended by the governor for being “very weak in
handling the strike situation here,” reported The Repository. Cox issued a statement
after finally permanently removing the mayor.
“In times such as these, no temporizing policy can be countenanced and I feel that
restoration to office might be accepted throughout the state as a relaxation of that
order of vigilance that must continue,” explained the governor. “The
laws must be enforced and no compromise must be made with that
fixed policy. Because of this, suspension was followed by removal
from office.”
Mayor Poorman, after less than two years on the job, was out of
that job, with the remainder of his term being served by the mayor
who preceded him, Henry A. Schrantz.
Gary Brown will write about a different front page in Repository history each day
during the paper’s bicentennial year. Email Gary at [email protected].