“My object is to clean up the party in Oklahoma. I intend to fight double dealing political thieves, with whom no self-respecting outlaw of former years can associate. “All I want is to see absolutely honest men at the head of the government, and after I have announced my candidacy if some man whose integrity and uprightness are unquestioned becomes a candidate I shall withdraw and support him with all of my ability. “Some people do not seem to be able to understand how an outlaw, an ex-train robber and federal prisoner can become sincerely law-abiding and a reformer in politics, but the explanation is simple. I made a mistake and defied the law. I was caught and punished--kept five years in prison--and then saw how I had been wrong to become an enemy of society. I decided to reclaim my place in society and set about doing it. As soon as I became a free man, living in a free community, I began to appreciate the differences in lawbreaking and the consequences thereof, and that made me a political reformer. “I had been a train robber, a crude, open defier of society, and I had been caught and punished. I saw all about me men who wore the best clothes and stood high in society robbing the people right and left and not getting caught or being punished. They were not as primitive as I had been in the method they chose. They did things in the dark and only appeared in the open when they had on their Sunday clothes, so to speak. “I favor the adoption of a reformatory parole system,” he said, “by which first offenders can be given a chance to redeem themselves. I think that a young man who is convicted for the first time should be allowed to stay at home and work under the watchful eye of the State instead of being locked up in a prison where, in all probability, he will be made a confirmed criminal. There will be no wholesale release of prisoners if I become governor, but I will exercise the power of pardon and parole with the view of reclaiming for society every man I can. As long as there is a chance of making a good citizen of a man we should try to do so.” Jennings was a train robber in Oklahoma and the southwest for several years before his final capture in 1897 and subsequent conviction in a federal court. He served a few years in the prison at Columbus, O., before being pardoned by President McKinley. His citizenship was later restored by President Roosevelt, and he began the practice of law in Oklahoma City. In 1912, he ran for the Democratic nomination as county attorney of Oklahoma county against six other candidates. Before the primaries five of the candidates withdrew to concentrate the vote against him, but in spite of this he obtained the nomination. At the general election he was defeated by a narrow margin by a Republican who was supported by both the Republicans and Democratic organizations. * * * * *