I managed to snag this ribbon on eBay earlier this week, and I’m quite proud of this find mentioning Samuel H Elrod, Clark County’s favorite son.
Not familiar with S. H? You should be. The legislators, Governor, and a lot of other people work in the building this 5th Governor of South Dakota built.
During his tenure, he served as chairman of the building committee for the state capitol, which also led to his ouster, losing his second term:
However, in 1904, Sam Elrod’s political stock shot skyward. He went to the Sioux Falls convention occupying a seat of honor beside the mighty Kittredge who was driving the old political machine now lying in the scrap-heap of eternal usefulness, licked his wary opponent, Coe 1. Crawford, to a frazzle, and was nominated by the republican party as their candidate for governor of South Dakota, Crawford took his defeat good-naturedly, climbed onto the band wagon helped to elect Elrod, and then came back two years later and whipped Elrod to a frazzle. (We are not well enough informed on Rooseveltian philosophic slang to know what two frazzles equal.)
Two things conspired sort of automatically to bring about the defeat of Elrod and cause his downfall, politically: the material to be used in building our new state capitol, whether it was to be Indiana or South Dakota stone, and the enactment of a statewide primary law. Elrod, as is characteristic of the man, took a decided position on each issue, and he was right on both. Still he went down to defeat before a lot of clap-trap that was a bugaboo, but an eloquent thing for campaign purposes.
The race that the Elrod ribbon is for represents a race he lost to Charles Burke in the primary, but his losses don’t diminish his eternal contributions to our great state.
That ribbon is in very good shape considering the age. Nice addition to your collection.