Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 October 1883 — BUTLER. [ARTICLE]

BUTLER.

•LD BEN SHAKING UP MASSACHUSETTS RADICALISM. Old Ben Butler is giving Massachusetts Radicalism and Republican hypocrisy such an overturning as it never had before. He addressed an audience of 7,000 one night last, week at Worcester. We make brief extracts: * * * * :Js I have to speak for a moment about Tewksberry. The officers thought they were entrenched there, but I put them under the charge of the Board of Health, Lunacy and Charity,and the moment that Board had to shoulder the Marshes they turned them out. [Applause.] They did not dare to keep them in longer. That Alms House with its dull men and women, crazy and poor, is now entirely reorganized.— There is a graveyard there now where paupers can be buried and their graves found. There is sufficient of food, sufficient of raiment, there is good care and attendance. Everybody has been turned out who belonged to the Marshes, save one, and he will go very soon. [Much laughter and applause.] Just as soon as I can get time to attend to him. I have not the appointment in my /gift or the turning out in my gift, but, as I remarked before, where there* is a will there is a way, and he has got to go. [ U proarious applause.] He has disgraced the State enough. I have tried to have the taxes cut down. I offered to carry on this Institution, if they would let me have the power, for two-thirdsj of wliat has been appropriated for it by the Legislature. They sent me a bill, but 1 vetoed it. — They sent me other bills, and I had either got to let these Institutions stop or agree to the expenditures. I made the offer from my own funds, if necessary, that I would carry on Tewksbury for s2o,ooolless than the appropriation, and the other Institutions in the same proportion, At the Woman’s Prison money will be saved, I having got a proper person in charge of it: I had occasion to veto thirteen of the bills passed by the legislature, and one of them was to give a man pay the second time for $75,000 where he had had his pay once and signed and receipted in full. [Applause].— Of course that would come out of your taxes. There was an effort to have that bill go thronghj and they beseeched me day in and day out to sign it during the four days I had it. Somebody was always at me to sign the Shanly bill. I got from one of the Senators a letter, asking me, because he was a Democratic Senator, to sign that bill, and that Senator has now published a card that he can not stand Butler’s administration any longer.— I [Great laughter.] He is one of the men who have gone back on me, aw they say. There fire quite a number of that kind. They are people to whom I would not gi v e an office, — I There was one fellow by the name of Is Icliols, who day in and day out besieged me in my boarding house and every- ; where else, demanding every Office in town. When I said: ! “I can’t give you that,” he wo’d say, “Then give me that then,” and so it went on, and he now has organized an Independent Democratic party on his own i account. He is Chairman of 1 it, and he is going to casta, vote against me, lie and his Secretary, as iur as I know [great merriment |, and it is go ing to cost the Republicans a heap of money to have him do that. [Renewed laughter and applause.) This is my stewardship in brief. This is Butlerism, gentlemen. (Great applause.) Tins is what I have done. They tell me 1 have disgraced the State. How? By

turning out incompetent officers? By making two Prisons a model? By making Tewksbury Alms House a model? — Yes, why? Why, I have exposed corruption. Now, which is the man to blame, the man who does corruption, or the man who expeses the corruption? The Republican party have been murdering infants at Tewksberry for twenty yrs. They have been starving" paupers for twenty years. They have been selling their bodies for twenty years. That they don’t deny. They say that they have quit now. (Great laughter and applause.) They have been letting the rats eat up the dead. They have had offices of your holy religion profaned. The reverend priest has said a mummery over blocks of wood in a coffin from which the body had gone to Harvard. It is not denied.— Look into the report. None of these things were denied in the report of the Legislative Committee. They were so busy abusing me for bringing out these things that they forgot to deny them. They say it has been altered since. Well, I agree I have shown a noxious sore on the body politic. I have shown what has made it. I applied the caustic and the iron and burned it out, and they say I have disgraced the State by so doing. (Tremendous applause.) 1 have helped her to be a State fit to live in and fit to die in by poor men without being either Icut up or skinned. (Great enthusiasm.) I have made it in that regard what every man has a right to be proud of, and if I have done no more good in the world than that, I have done all that I may hope to do, and than which I can do no greater act. But I have done more than that, and I claim credit for it. I have waked up the whole country in this matter. Investigation is going on everywhere. (Tremendous apElause.) But they say, “You tave not used dignified language, Gen. Butler,” (laughter), and then they go on to say, “Well, lie don t know any better; he don’t know what good language is; lie was not educated at Harvard.” (Laughter and applause.) After passing in review other kindred topics of his Administration, Governor Butler continued: “Now, gentlemen, I have said all and more than you have cared to hear, and much more than I had intended to say. The issue is with you. My time will not permit me to see you again. My record is before you. You have known me, man and You have known me under all circumstances. I can not be advertised to you. I can not be injured by any lie or slander that may be published.— Do not believe anything that you read in the newspapers about me in this campaign, because they will be lies. Newspapers are not liable now for I am up for public office, but when the campaign is over if they publish any lie about me I will try and see if there is any justice for such things.— (Great applause andfcheers.) — Now, I say look out. I should not be surprised if the morning before the election you should hear that I had died suddenly the night before. — (Laughter and applause.] Do not mind that. If you see it published on every bulletin board, keep on voting for me all the same. [Laughter and applause.] I shall turn up all in good time. [Applause.]— Don’t have any fear of that. And if in the providence of God I should not, it is better to vote for a dead Governor than a living nonentity.