Transcribed by Spessard Stone from Tallahassee Democrat of Thursday, October 26, 1972
Tampa (AP)-Doyle Elam Carlton, Florida’s Great Depression governor who cut his own salary
and chopped jobs from the state bureaucracy to shore up a failing economy, is dead at the age of
85.(1) Carlton, who died Wednesday in a nursing home a month after suffering a fall at his Tampa residence, often said he believed the “approval of tomorrow is far better than the applause of today.”
Until his injury, Carlton, a Democrat, had remained active in the law practice he established here in 1912.
The Sunshine State’s 25th governor was inaugurated on Jan. 8, 1929, just months after the Florida land “boom” had burst and scores of banks had closed. He based his gubernatorial campaign on advise doled out years earlier by silver-tongued populist William Jennings Bryan.
“I am counting on you, as a young man, to carry out my policies,” Bryan told the Wauchula farm boy before the turn of the century. “I believe the greatest need in America today is faith in the wisdom of doing right.”
Carlton said he never forgot what he heard as a young boy still plowing his father’s citrus farmlands and riding to school in an ox cart.
A wide sombrero hat, an easy gait gained from years in the saddle, and a fiery campaign oratory about expenses marked his drive for office.
The campaign was long and bitter, but when it was over Carlton had polled 148,455 votes to William J. Howey’s 95,018.
When Carlton took office, Florida was crippled physically as well as economically. A great hurricane had crashed ashore in September 1928 in the Palm Beach-Fort Lauderdale area and followed the backbone of the state into Georgia. When it was over, more than 2,000 Floridians were dead and millions of dollars of damage was left behind.
Because of the depression, virtually every county was burdened with bonds for roads, schools, courthouses and canals.
Carlton’s first step was to push through a plan for redistributing the gasoline tax to funnel funds to the state’s hardest-hit economic areas.
Shortly thereafter he cut his own salary from $9,000 to $7,500 and paid office expenses out of his own pocket. He also dug into his own money to entertain guests at the executive mansion. He said he left office in 1933 with less money than he had when he went in.
Carlton often said the thing that bothered him most as governor was having to fire employees during his economy drive.
In 1931 the Legislature passed the state’s first pari-mutuel racing bill and Carlton promptly vetoed it. But the House, led by young Dan Chappell, overrode Carlton’s veto by three votes, and the Senate concurred by a margin of one.
He said that he vetoed the bill despite a bribe offer by a man who said his signature was worth $100,000 if it was on the bill.
“I told him if it’s worth that much I believe I’ll keep the signature,” Carlton recalled.
During the same year it took the Legislature’s regular 60-day session plus two special 20-day sessions to get an appropriations bill passed.
Following his return to private law practice in 1934, Carlton served as special attorney for the state in the settlement of the John Ringling estate, a vast and complex legacy which gave Florida the Ringling Museum and mansion at Sarasota.
A bid for the U.S. Senate in 1936 failed.
The late President Eisenhower appointed him to the first Civil Rights Commission and the late John F. Kennedy named him to the U.S. Agricultural Advisory Commission.
The Tallahassee office building which houses the state comptroller’s office is named after him.
A staunch Baptist, he graduated from Stetson University and obtained a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Chicago in 1910. Carlton got his law degree at Columbia University in 1912.
Until his death he was a member of the Tampa law firm of Carlton, Fields, Ward, Manuel, Smith and Cutler, which he founded 60 years ago.
Besides his son [Doyle Elam Carlton, Jr.], an unsuccessful 1960 gubernatorial candidate beaten in the Democratic primary runoff by Farris Bryant, Carlton is survived by his widow, Nell, Brother Leffie of Wauchula, and two daughters. Mrs. David Ward resides in Tampa, Mrs. W. J. Ott lives in Tallahassee.
Funeral services for the former governor who said he “always lived in the faith that joy would come in the morning” are scheduled for 3:30 p.m. Friday at the First Baptist Church in Tampa.
(1) Nearly all references cite July 6, 1887 for the birth of Doyle E. Carlton; however, Leland Francis Carlton, his younger brother, was born January 23, 1888. The latter’s daughter, Betty Carlton Kay, told this writer that her uncle was born July 6, 1885, that there was not only six months difference in the ages of her uncle and father and that Doyle had taken two years off his age. Albert Carlton, his father, in his pension application gave July 6, 1885 for the birth of Doyle. National Cyclopedia Of American Biography in two editions has respectively on page 160 “CARLTON, Doyle Elam, 24th governor of Florida, (1929-33), was born at Wauchula, Fla. July 6, 1887...” and Vol. 57, page 636, “CARLTON, Doyle Elam, lawyer and governor of Florida, was born at Wauchula, Fla., July 6, 1885...”
Newspaper article, courtesy of Canter Brown, Jr.
January 3, 2002