Democratic Sentinel, Volume 1, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 August 1877 — REBUKE THE DEMAGOGUES! [ARTICLE]

REBUKE THE DEMAGOGUES!

Certain Republican newspapers, says the New York Sun, try to give a party turn to the recent disturbances by declaring that they are of Democratic origin, and that nearly all the strikers and rioters are Democrats. Nothing could be more untruthful than this assertion. The most formidable outbreak and the most disastrous events that have marked this calamitous conflict have .occurred at Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh, with its suburbs, is the stronghold of the Republican party in Pennsylvania. The county of Allegheny, in which Pittsburgh is situated and where nearly all the vot?s of the county are east, usually gives a Republican majority of 12,000 and in great contests it has given as high as 18,000. It has always been claimed by the Republicans and conceded by tiie Democrats that the mass of the mechanics and miners and other workingmen in and around Pittsburg voted the Republican ticket. But would it be either fair or decent to infer from such premises and loudly assert that the riots at Pittsburgh were Republican riots? Take another illustration from the city of New York. It is the Democratic stronghold of the county. Two of the great trunk railways, the Erie and the New' Yoik Central, terminate here; and the same is practically the case with the Pennsylvania Railroad. The most of the existing troubles are on these roads and their branches. In this city and its suburbs dwell hundreds of mechanics and laborers whose employments are connected with these three railways. Besides these, this city contains thousands of laboring men who can get no work, many of whom are very poor and some of whom, with their wives and children, suffer for lack of the necessaries of life. Nobody disputes that on election days the large majority of tiie voters of these various classes support the Democratic party. And yet amid the trials and temptations of this emergency, New York is the most quiet of all the great Northern cities that stand between the Connecticut river and the Pacific ocean. Should not such facts silence’ the brawling Republican demagogues? The simple truth is that party politics have nothing whatever t; do with these strikes and riots, except in so far as the Electoral Conspiracy of the Republicans has indirectly caused and promoted them.