Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 August 1882 — About Gerrymandering. [ARTICLE]

About Gerrymandering.

An Illinois Postmaster, who is also an editor —atad who is, moreover, one of those specimen editors always -to. be found on the free and oasy route called an annual excursion of the Illinois press—calls attention again to the South Carolina Congressional apportionment, and holds up to scorn an editor /rs the same locality (who, of course, being a Democrat, could not be a Postmaster), for his denunciation of the Republicans of lowa, Michigan and Minnesota for districting those States so that no Democrat could be elected from them tb Cbnrgress. Those Illinois editors need not go to South Carolina, or to lowa, Michigan, or Minnesota, for a specimen of the downright political villainy called a Congressional apportionment. There are rival newspaper shops in Springfield, and the reoords of the State House are accessible to them. These records show that a Republican Legislature, speeially convened by a Republican Governor to make a Republican apportionment of the State of Illinois, did, by the dictation of a majority in Republican caucus (some Republicans still protesting, and yet finally consenting to the outrage), confer upon a stagnant Republican population of 129,000, which had increased but 9,000 in ten years, the franchise of a Congressional district; and upon another portion of the inhabitants of thp State, numbered in 1880 as being 185,614, and whose locality had in ten years, gained 85,933, the franchise of a Congressional district. The apportionment of Illinois, made a few months ago, was intended to confer upon 51 per cent’, of the voters of the State the election of fourteen Congressmen, and upbh 49 per cent, of the voters of the State the choice of six Congressmen. Nagreater outrage has been designed in any State or perpetrated in any. When the- Springfield Postmaster and the other editor -at Springfield who is not a Postmaster have heard the returns in November, they may not need to look outside of Illinois for a scheme that has miscarried.—Chicago Times. No Silks for Workingmen’s Wives. . So the object of protection is to compel “the working classes” of the tJnited States to wear serge and hodden-gray instead of cloth and silk. Certainly this is the effect of protection. Rift it is rather startling to find the Tribune avowing this as the object of protection in such a paragraph as the following : “ Considering that it is only the well-to-do who can afford to buy silks, it will not be considered oppressive by the working classes that the Government derived a revenue of about $21,000,000 from the import-silk trade of the year. This taxation did not fall upon them. ’* Pray, why should not the wives and daughters of the “ working classes” buy and “wear silks?” In order to secure monstrous profits to thirty silk manufactuiers the Republican framers of the tariff have so closed the markets of the United States against the enterprise of mankind that “it is only the well-to-do who can afford to buy silks.” Were the protective duties levied to .secure these monstrous profits removed “tho working classes of this country” could “afford to buy silks” in this year of our lord 1882 as they used to do before this “taxation” was imposed. The “taxation” of which the Tribune prates so glibly falls directly upon them in the form of a practical discrimination against them in dress. —New York Werld. •*