Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 June 1882 — Republican Thievery and Jobbery. [ARTICLE]

Republican Thievery and Jobbery.

There is something remarkably strange about the Howgate fraud, or, more properly speaking, theft. The signal service costs over a million of dollars annually. Of that amount Capt. Howgate stole $140,000, and, as the records show, all within the space of one year. He drew the money from the fund on vouchers regularly passed, and, as it appears, with evidences of fraud upon the very face of many of them. They were passed and approved without objection. Nearly one-third of the annual grant, not including the pay and maintenance of the soldiers connected with the signal corps, was stolen. Notwithstanding this theft the work of the corps went on without any apparent difficulty. There was plenty of money to meet every demand of the service. But, in the face of the costly experience through which the country has passed in that particular, Gen. Hazen, the present Superintendent of the service, has made his requisition tor a much larger sum of money thah heretofore appropriated, without even assigning any reason for his excessive demand. It is not improbable that Gen. Hazen understands the character of the Forty-sev-enth Congress, and that he knows all that is necessary is to ask for any amount and it will be appropriated. The manner in which this Congress has appropriated money warrants the head of any department or bureau to ask for millions with the full confidence that it will be granted. Rings and jobbers control Congress, and the determination appears to be to get the idle millions out of the treasury vaults. If Secor Robeson and John Roach, together with their sympathizers, could only manage to get Holman of Indiana, Sam Randall and a few other Democrats out of the way the vaults of the treasury would soon be empty. But these men stand in the way with all the force of their strong character. But the Republicans have a working majority in Congress, and when the records of the Forty-seventh Congress are made up and published to the country it will be found that a more profligate legislative body never before convened. During the entire session the Republicans have been trying to fasten upon the House a new rale which will allow the majority to ride rough shod over all opposition of the minority. Thus far they have not succeeded. • With the adoption of the rule proposed, the road to the treasury would be entirely clear and the opposition of the minority to the wholesale squandering of the public jnoney would be of no .avail. It is about time that public opinion

should be thoroughly aroused to the enormous expenditures which have been and will be voted by this Congress. Men who have watched the course of legislation in Washington for the past fifty years, men of both parties, say that never in the history of Federal legislation has there ever been such reckless appropriation of moneys. Men seem to have gone to Washington to see how much of the people’s money they could spend and appropriate without reference to the objects. It is high a change in the political management of the Government should take place. This change cannot possibly take place too speedily. It is time the books were balanced, and that balancing must be done by those who desire such balances, And not by those who are opposed to them. — Grand Rapids Democrat.