AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN
charged, still held these evidences of authority. In April of 1904, I took hold of the matter. I required, before appointment, affidavits to be filed, giving the records and characters of the men and the necessity for their appointment, restricted the commissions to a term of three years, and determined at the next legislative session to endeavor to do away with the entire system.
During my whole term as governor, all attempts to make use of the office and its incumbent for advertising purposes were, as I have written, resisted and thwarted and, therefore, all invitations to pitch the first ball at baseball games and to do like things were declined. On the 13th of April, however, I went to Shamokin Dam in Snyder County, along with Hunter and other officials of the Highway Department, and there, with a pick and a shovel, in the presence of a crowd, began the good roads movement and the improvement of the roads by the state. I made a little speech to the onlookers and then began to throw the dirt.
A commission, of which Governor William A. Stone was the chairman, for the purpose of erecting a Capitol in the place of that which had been burned, had been organized August 20, 1901, but more than a year had been occupied in the selection of the plans and the preparatory arrangements, so that little of the work had been done when I became Governor and assumed the responsibility for the progress of the building. I laid the corner-stone May 5, 1904, which covered a copper box containing contemporaneous records and suitable inscriptions, using a silver trowel presented to me for the purpose. A cornerstone had been placed by Governor Daniel H. Hastings in the structure begun in 1898, but since that was a cheap brick building, practically abandoned, being regarded as insufficient, it was thought best to begin anew.
On the 24th of May I made an address in the morning at the dedication of the new court house in Norristown
