The Evening World

THOSE CHARGES AGAINST TRUSTEE EHLERS NOT SO AWFUL.

He Talked Freely to Some Other Trustees, and Told Them a Story or Two, and Now They Have Gone Back on Him-

The Case Is Not a Bit Like the Soulard Scandal-What Mr. Ehlers Says.

The Evening World presents to its readers to-day the sum and substance of the serious, almost awful charges brought against School Trustee E. M. L. Ehlers, of the Ninth Ward, about which the School Commissioners were so very secret yesterday.

Col. Ehlers and his fellow-Commissioners, Dr. McNamara and Mr. Seaman, who constitute the majority in the Ninth Ward Board of Trustees, had been duly and thoroughly investigated by the By-Law Committee of the Board of Education on an indictment containing twelve counts, and the Committee had disagreed as to what their report should be.

Chairman Schmidt and Commissioners Gugenheimer and Sprague, the majority of the Committee, thought enough had been proven to make it imperative that the three trustees should be asked to resign, and in the interests of the Ward and for harmony they thought the accusing minority of that Board of Trustees, Messrs. Benedict and Tinsdale, should also resign.

Commissioner Crary didn't, but he failed to formulate his own opinion. Commissioner Holt, however, made a minority report in which he declared that even if all the alleged facts charged against the trustees were true, they constituted no offense sufficient to warrant the request for the resignations of the culprits.

That is the way the matter stood when the Board of Education met yesterday.

Commissioner Sprague threw a small bomb. He wanted the charges against Col. Ehlers, or at least four of the twelve counts in his indictment, reopened before the committee.

He declared that Col. Ehlers was a discredit to the school system. That the testimony taken by his Committee in secret session was unfit for the records of the Board that Col. Ehlers had disgraced his official ermine and, in short, that he was a very, very bad man.

He was voted down, however, by a vote of 9 to 7, the female members of the Board being in the minority.

Of course, curiosity to know what were the awful misdeeds of Trustee Ehlers were strong, but the five commissioners who constitute the By-Law Committee were as dumb as oysters, and they alone held the secret.

Somebody, however, hinted that there was a woman in the case, and that eventually the case would read like the Soulard scandal. A morning paper stated this as a fact.

An Evening World reporter was told by Chairman Schmitt to-day that so far as concerned the statement that the charges of immorality against Col. Ehlers being like those in the Soulard case, it was due to Col. Ehlers to say that it was untrue.

No charge of personal impurity had been made against Col. Ehlers. Further than that Commissioner Schmitt would not say, on the ground that what information he had was gained in executive session of his Committee.

Col. Ehlers, a big, open-faced, jolly man of full habit, was found at his desk at the Masonic Temple. He is Grand Secretary of that Order for this State

He laughed when asked what he had to say to the charges. Then he grew serious and thundered:

"Simply that I am as innocent of moral turpitude as a babe. If I have committed any offense it is telling stories to two or three men in private, not in public. Stories with a punch, for I am said to be quite a story-teller."

"Your case does not resemble the Soulard case, then?"

"No, d---n it! There! I say a spade is a spade, you see.

Not at all like that case. No liaison here. The charges preferred by Benedict and Tinsdale against all three of us were neglect of duty and inefficiency.

There were no specifications. The counts were made from the evidence after wards taken.

The trouble grew out of the trial of Miss Pope, Principal of No. 3 female department We supported her against Trustee Tinsdale.

We were a majority. Miss Pope was fined finally by the Board of Education.

Four counts are still charged against you personally, what are they?" asked the reporter.

Col. Ehlers laughed again and produced a document. It was his indictment.

"I am charged with having behaved improperly at Grammar School No. 3, male department, Christmas time, 1886. This is what I did.

We were having the usual Christmas racket and 600 or 700 boys and many parents were assembled in the school with horns, tin pans, clappers, squeaks and other noisy things.

"Principal Sutherland was in the habit of introducing me to the school with a flattering speech, and this time I came prepared for him.

When he got to praising my good qualities very hard I drew a big placard from under my coat and held it so that the boys could see it but the teacher couldn't.

It read like this

I AM SOMETHING OF A LIAR MYSELF

"Then I am charged with haranguing the girls of No. 3 about their not being permitted to occupy the new annex to the building and advising them to go home and ask their parents to intercede for them with the Board of Education.

Third, they say that I made use of vulgar and obscene language about a female teacher. Well, I don't lie. I tell the truth. I said to one of the Trustees in private conversation, Miss--is an old maid. She ought to get married. It would do her more good than anything else.'

The last charge is that 'I have deported myself in a manner tending to bring discredit on the system and under this head the evidence shows that once in a group of Commissioners and Trustees discussing the then recent appointment of Miss Dodge and Mrs. Agnew and some of the duties which Commissioners are supposed to perform, notably the going down into the furnace rooms under the schools: nosing around sewers and the like, I said something about Miss Dodge and her probable willingness to perform these duties, because she was strong-minded and something like a man in her qualities.

This is the head and front of my offending," concluded the Shakespearian trustee.

"For being like other men I am a d---ned scoundrel."