Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 September 1885 — THE IOWA CAMPAIGN. [ARTICLE]

THE IOWA CAMPAIGN.

General Weaver’s Opening Speech at Davenport. [Davenport special to Chicago Times.] A large audience gathered in the Turner Hall to listen to the first Democratic speech of the campaign, made by General Weaver. The speaker first alluded to fusion, and said it was absolutely necessary to gain a victory at the polls. Mr. Weaver said that be had come to Davenport to answer the three questions propounded by Mr. Larrabee in his speech of acceptance at Des Moines. The questions were: 1. Has tho Republican party ever been wrong on any question? 2. Can you point to a single instance where the Republican party has been wrong? 3. On the other hand, can you point to a single instance where the Democratic,party was right? Mr. Weaver said that to answer these questions it was only necessary to dissect the Republican party platform. In one of the planks they demand that the public domain be only given to settlers, and land-grants to corporations be refused. In their twenty-four years of rulejthe Republican party has given most of the public domain to corporations, the rest they had leased to the cattle kings. In Indian Territory they have fenced out human beings and fenced in beasts. Was the Republican party right in doing this? Grover Cleveland, as soon as he was inaugurated, drove out these cattle kings and proposes to open in time these lands to settlers. Was not the Democratic party right in this? The Republican platform asks for a law against pooling in the State, yet the Republican party had voted, as did Mr. Larrabee himself, against such a bill, introduced in the Legislature of 1878. The platform asks for legitimate screening for the protection of coal miners. Yet only at the last session of the legislature Mr. Larrabee, with the rest of the Republican party, voted against the screening bilk The platform asks for indiscrimination in freight rates. In 1883 a republican legislature defeated such a measure. The platform wants the Railroad Commissioners elected by the people. Mr. Larrabee, in 1883, voted against a bill embodying such sentiments in the State Senate. Every one of these measures the Republican party now declares itself to favor. They opposed them a short time ago. Certainly, if they were right then they are wrong now. Their own platform convicts them. The speaker then referred to Auditor Brown’s dismissal from office at the point of the bayonet, and at this point received many cheers from the andience. He asserted that the Republicans were indignant because Grover Cleveland had driven out of office disabled Union soldiers and placed in their stead rebels. Yet in the face of such an assertion, in Republican lowa, with a “school-house on every hill-top,” the Governor of the State at the point of the bayonet had driven from office a one-armed soldier who had been elected by the votes of the people in a time of profound peace. Such assertions come with poor grace from the Republican party. If such a thing had happened in Mississippi it would have been heralded over lowa from river to river, and every Republican orator would have expressed his horror at such conduct.