Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 February 1883 — Political Notes. [ARTICLE]

Political Notes.

The Republican papers are publishing cuts of Tabor, the short-term Senator from Colorado. He has, as thus represented, a sinister countenance, a ferocious mustache, and altogether looks like a disappointed pirate in his Sunday clothes. The organs which are chuckling over the fact that Vincent, the runaway Alabama Treasurer, is a Democrat, have evidently forgotten Mr. Dorsey. They should be careful ,how they throw stones. —Chicago Times. Thebe is much eagerness on the part of the Republican organs to have Congress pass some sort of a tariff bill, so as to let the party go out with the credit of having done something in answer to the demand for a reduction of taxation.

The Republican organs are cliuokling with great glee over the fact that Vincent, the defaulting Treasurer of Alabama is a Democrat. Perhaps it is so difficult to find evidence that the Republicans are not doing the majority of the stealing that they feel tickled when they find a case of this sort. Of the last three Presidents of the United States it may be said that: Hayes was counted in; * Garfield was bought in; And Arthur was shot in. Not one of them had a majority or plurality of the votes of the people. “Hurrah for the Republican party!”— Martinsburg (Ind.) Statesman. Peter Cooper, the leader of the New York friends of protection who held a meeting in the interest of American labor the other night, has for many years been a hard-working laboring man. He has sat on the platform of every public lecture delivered in New York for the last fifty or sixty years, and if that, isn’t hard work it would be difficult to conceive what is.

Tariff “reform” is making rapid progress backward. In. our present exorbitant tariff the duties on steel ingots, blooms, billets and slabs are 45 per cent, ad valorem. This rate the Tariff Reform Commission propose to ohange to a specific duty of 2 cfents a pound, and the free-tobacco and cheap-whisky Ways and Means Committee nave approved their robber recommendation. What this means is simply that the duties on these indispensable materials for American manufacturers are to be increased to the following outrageous figures: On steel ingots, 222 per cent.; on steel blooms, 204 per cent.; on steel slabs, 204 per cent.; on steel billets, 150 per cent. The country has about al>andoned all hope of tariff reform from either party in this Congress, and its chief interest in the proceedings at Washington has become a languid wonder how far the Republicans, assisted by the Pennsylvania, New England, New Jersey and Louisiana Democrats and Dan Voorliees, of Indiana, will think it wise to go in their defiance of public opinion. Any curious person who cares to see how cyclones are made should keep his eye on Pig-Iron Kelley and his Committee of the Wavs and Means of How Not to Do It. They are brewing one which, when it sweeps through the political world, will make Prof. Wiggins, who is getting up the great storm for next March, green with envy. —Chicago Tribune.

A New Yoke paper figures out some interesting facts with regard to the effects of the protective tariff. In the case of glue, for instance, the tax collected by the Government is only $82,836 a year, while the tax collected by the protected manufacturers in the higher prices they are enabled by the tariff to charge the consumers is not less than $720,702. .The people pay the manufacturers $637,896 more than to the Government, and it would be cheaper for us to pension off their workingpeople on the same pay they-now receive and let the manufacturers go at some other business. In the same way it calculates that we could better afford to pay the soapmakers $5,000,000 not to make soap than to continue paying double price for it for the sake of protecting the soap-boilers, and the castoroil men $321,000 not to manufacture any more castor-oil at public expense. A Few-ow of the Royal College of Surgery, London, was fined $lO for “furiously riding a tricycle.” He was traveling so rapidly that a. constable on •horseback had great difficulty in catching him, though it was shown in court that the surgeon had almtady traveled sixty miles that day on his'maohine.