Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 September 1886 — Page 3

PLAIN TALK.

Governor Gray, of Indiana, on the Political Issues of the Day. His Opening Speech of the Campaign, Delivered at Logansport. At the November election, two years ago, the people of Indiana declared at the ballot-box in favor of a change of political parties in the administration of the Government, and I think the people are satisfied with the change, and will affirm that judgment on the second day of November next. The Democratic party, in my judgment, never had stronger reasons to hope for success than in the present campaign. The administration of national affairs has been clean and honest; the public debt has been steadily reduced and the national credit never stood higher than it does to-day. The monetary system of the country is in good condition, and interest on money lower than at any former period in the history of the country. Business confidence is being rapidly restored and the business ouilook indicates returning prosperity. The number of employes in many of the departments of lhe Government have been decreased, the expenses thereof reduced and a system of retrenchment and reform inaugurated that will save nearly $5,000,000 annually in the expense of the Government. More pensions have been granted than during the same period under Republican administrations, and more private pension bills passed and approved by the President than during the eight years of the Presidency under General Grant. Neaily 100,000,000 acres of the public domain, voted to corporate monopolies by Republican administrations, have been recovered back to the people. The ■usurping of the national reservations by the cattle kings has been broken up, and the territories are being saved from the grasping greed of land monopolies. The rebuilding of the navy, destroyed by Republican rule, has been commenced, and if the Democratic party shall be continued in power one-fourth the length of time that the Republican party controlled the Government, the country will witness a navy corresponding in efficiency and power with the other nations of the world; a navy that will be the pride and glory of our country, as it was prior to the w'ar under Democratic rule. The Republican party squandered nearly $500,000,000 of money in the administration of the Navy Department, and when it went out of power left nothing to show for it. A prominent Republican United States Senator recently admitted that the Government hadn’t a vessel worthy to be called a war ship. Under the present administration theie has been no Credit Mobilier purchasing Congressional votes in aid of a great railroad corporation; there has been no giving away of the nation’s bonds as a subsidy to railroad monopolies; there has been no sale of post-traderships by the War Department as, under Belknap; no starroute conspiracies defrauding the Government of millions of money; no squandering of millions of money in the Navy Department by corrupt practices; no .whisky ring conspiracies defrauding the Government of hundreds of millions of dollars, the foot-prints of some of the conspirators pointing toward some of the departments of the Government; no exorbitant mail steamship subsidies; no land rings stealing the public domain; no foreign syndicates acquiring immense tracts of land in the National Territories; no Congressional salary grabs have characterized Congress as under Republican administration. j&very candid man will admit that the tendency is toward better government. And this progress has been made in the face of a resisting Republican Senate, filled with railroad attorneys and great corporation lawyers, ever ready to aid the schemes of monopolists. In what contrast is this record made within the short space of sixteen months by the present administration to the predictions made by the Republican orators as to what would happen the country if the Democratic party should obtain control of the Government? For twenty years the Republican orators and the Republican press charged and predicted that if the Democratic party obtained control of the Government, the national credit would be ruined; its monetary system destroyed, business confidence unsettled, and business enterprises paralyzed; that the rebel debt would be paid, rebel soldiers pensioned and the colored voters deprived of the right of suffrage. For twenty long years that was the battle cry and slogan of the Republican party. Now well may its orators exclaim, in the language of Othello: “Our occupation is gone.” The only thing left the Republican orator is the false and old worn-out statement that the colored voters of the South are not permitted to vote. In every district in the South in which the colored voters are in the majority the Republican party demands success, and if it fails to achieve victory at the polls, it raises the cry that the colored people were deprived of the right to vote. It denies to the colored man tue right to vote according to his own convictions, but demands that he shall, under all circumstances, vote the Republican ticket, and assumes that when he does not do so he has not been permitted to cast his ballot free and untrammeled. As a member of the Indiana Senate, I voted to ratify and accept, on the part of Indiana, the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States, giving the colored man the right of suffrage, and I cast the vote with the full understanding that the colored man should have the same right that the white man d in the casting of the ballot; that he should have the right to ally himself with whatever political party he chose, and to vote? according to the dictates of his own judgment. 1 believe the time is rapidly coming when the Republican party will cease to own the colored voter, and that he will vote with whatever party his judgment dictates. The Democratic party of Indiana ha* kept its faith and proven true to the pledges it made the people in the last campaign. E’-ery Democratic member in Congress from Indiana voted to take up for consideration the tariff bill, and every Republican member of Congress from Indiana voted against any consideration whatever of the measure, and the Republican State platform indorses their action. The Democratic House passed the resolution directing the Secretary of the Treasury to pay out in redemption of the public debt the surplus in the Treasury. The Republican Senate, true to its servility to the

■xmey pawv, amaseulated it of all its efficient features, so as to make it useless for the purposes it was intended. The Republican party charges that the Democratic party is violating its profession of civilservice reform by removing Republican officials for the purpose of giving place to Democrats. Well, I think that is civilservice reform; certainly no candid person would expect to reform the civil service by leaving in office the officeholders of the party whose administration of public affairs had made reform necessary. Some of the grea est statesmen this country has produced have contended that frequent elections are necessary to the perpetuation of our free institutions, and that frequent elections keep the public mind alive to the working of the Government. This seems to have been the theory of the framers of our Government when they provided for frequent elections in the organic acts of the Federal and State Governments. But the public attention cannot be kept d rected to the management of Government affairs by frequent elections unless the result of the election be of great interest to the electors. Let it be once understood that the result of the election, as between the parties, would make no change in the Government officials, parties would soon cease to exist, and the people would soon lose all interest in the elections. When the people take no interest in the elections they will not go to the ballot-box, and when they cease to go to the ballot-box we will be at the beginning of the end of our repub.ican form of government. The last Presidential contest, like all prior thereto, was a contest between parties, and not between individuals. There have always been political parties in this country since the formation of the Government, and I presume there always will be; there are great political parties in every civilized country, and experience has shown that great political parties are better than political factions, and when the people elect the ticket of a political party, the people mean by such election that that party shall have control. If that is not toe case, then the holding of a Republican National and State Convention and the holding of a Democratic National and State Convention, and the campaign that always follows, is simply a farce; and while there were in the last campaign quite a number of questions of public policy discussed, yet the overshadowing question in the canvass, and the question that had more to do with determining the result than any other, was whether the Republican party should be continued in control of the Government four years longer, or whether there should be a change and the Democratic party placed in power. The decision at the bal-lot-box was that the Republican party should step down and out, and hand over the administration of the Government to the Democrats; but from the very day of the inaguration of the President up to the present time, every removal of a Republican official brings forth a cry of denunciation all along the Republican line. But the Republican leaders now say that their opposition to removals does not arise simply because Republicans are removed from office, but because charges are preferred which the incumbent is not allowed to see or defend, but it is a well-known fact that long before charges of offensive partisanship, or any other kind, were preferred, or at least before it was known the charges were being preferred, the most vindictive abuse and denunciation was heaped upon the administration by the Republican press over the removal of every Republican official. If the Republican office-holder had shown any disposition to obey the will of the people, as expressed by the election, by willingly surrendering his office, or if the leaders of the Republican party had advised such deference to the result of the election, no charges, I presume, of offensive partisanship would have been made. The administration, in my judgment, made a mistake in requiring charges of offensive partisanship to be preferred as a cause of removal. The people at the ballot-box had preferred all the charges neces ary. But the Republican officials became so emboldened by the stand taken by their party leaders against removals that the postal clerks in the Railway Mail Service went so far as to organize a conspiracy and threatened to boycott the Government by resigning en masse if any more removals were made, and while the Republican press teemed with denunciation of the Knights of Labor, it had no words of condemnation for the conspiracy among Government employes, which, if carried out, would have seriouslydisturbed the service. The people, in electing the Democratic national ticket, did not intend thereby that the Democrats should have the President and Vice President only; the decision meant that the Democratic party should be given control of the Government as rapidly as the office-holders could be changed without doing violence to the public service, and without violating the civil-service law. I have but little faith in the efficacy of the civil-service law, and bel eve there is little reform to be obtained by virtue of its provisions. As long, however, as it is upon the statute books of the republic it ought to be respected. The civil-service reform that the country wants is not a schoolmaster’s examination, but the appointment of upright, capable men to office, and an honest and economical adm nistration of public affairs. The country thus far has never suffered seriously from the incompetency of the office-holder. All the frauds and peculations, all the conspiracies formed to rob the Government have been gotten up by accomplished scoundrels, who would have had no trouble to have passed an examination before the Civil-service Commission.

Gerrymandering.

It must have tickled the risibilities of his auditors to hear Senator Harrison declaiming against the iniquity of the Indiana gerrymander. The achievement of the Indiana Democrats, which Senator Harrison denounces as a disfranchisement of Republicans for political ends, is not one whit worse than what his own party is chargeable with in every State where it has the power. In California the Democrats in 1881 cast 45.58 per cent, of the total vote, and they have one Representative out of six in Congress; ia Kansas the Democratic vote was 33.90 per cent., representation in Congress nil; in Maine the Democratic vote was 39.88 per cent., representation nil; in Massachusetts the Republican vote was only 48.36 per cent., representation in Congress ten out of twelve; in Minnesota the Republican vote was 58.77 per cent,, its representation was all; in Wisconsin the Republican vote was 50.38 per cent . and its representation seven out of nine. These instances are sufficient to illustrate the character of the disfranchisement Republicans are capable of for political ends where they have the opportunity.— Chicago News, Rep.

MR. BILKINS’ SPECIMEN.

His aste for Natural History—A New Accession—What He Di I Not Get. Mr. Eiikins has of late developed a taste for natural history, and Las procured quite a number of specimens which would give an old toper the j.mjams to look at. He has toads pickled and preserved, toads with horns and without, spiders of many kinds and varying degrees of ugliness and size, from quite small and only ordinarily ugly to very large and extremely hideous. He has birds and bats, "small owls and big owls, frogs, polywogs, wood-chucks and even the h ghly concentrated skunk; but his greatest pride is in a particula ly disagreeable and remarkably nasty collection of snakes. Not satisfied with the native and comparatively harmless kind, he has been to the expense of importing various specimens of surpassing ugliness and poisonousness. The most of the collect on have been pickled or stuffed, so that the observer doesn’t rufi the risk of having a choice assortment of deadly virus injected into any exposed portion of his anatomy to the detriment of bodily and mental comfort; but in order to study the habits of two or three of the most villainous of the lot Mr. Lilkins has thus far, or to quite a recent date, spared their miserable existence. I should as soon think of sparing the most villainous specimen of the murderer to observe his habits as to study the habits of the meanest reptile in creation, but then, as an old woman once said, “The e is just as much difference in some people as there is in anybody.” A few days ago Mr. Bilkins received by express from the South a sturdy specimen of the whip snake (which fights at short range and with most disastrous results) with which he was highly delighted, and stowed him away under a glass case in a corner of his library, as he had no place in his cabinet in which he could put him just then. Mr. Bilkins studied this elegant poison-bag with the keenest del ght, and dilated upon his beautiful (?) points much as he would upon those of a fine horse, to the disgust of Mrs. Bilkins, who hasn’t a taste for science and doesn’t like to take snake with her dinner or tea, or be edified (?) between whiles.

The other evening, as Bilkins was on the point of retiring, he heard a crash in the direction of the library, and he hastened thither, clad only in the garments nature provides for us all and a night robe. As he opened the library door a gust of wind put out his light, and taking one step within "lie stepped upon something cold, and at the same instant he experienced a sharp sting in the bottom of his foot. It dashed upon him in a moment that some accident had upset his snake and he had stepped upon it and been bitten. Ho jumped back from the room, closed the door, and rent the air with his cries, which soon brought the whole family to the spot. “Telephone for a doctor without a moment’s delay,” was his first direction. “Give me the whisky bottle from the closet,” was the next. His eldest son soon had the doctor, and Mrs. B. presented the whisky, which the frenzied Bilkins seized and drank to the last drop, after which, considering himself reasonably secure against the effects of the bite, he directed his son to procure something and open the door, and, if possible, kill the reptile before other mischief was done. The boy had an old army cutlass among his treasures which he procured, and opening the door carefully looked in, and after a hasty look, an expression of astonishment passed over his face and he doubled up with suppressed laughter. “What in the name of all that’s good,” exclaimed Bilkins, “are you stopping to laugh at, you young idiot ?” For answer the boy pointed to the library floor, where laid a ladies’ riding whip with a flexible rubber handle to which was attached a strap and buckle to attach it to the arm. 1 ilkins had stepped on the buckle and run the teeth into his foot. The snake was still safe in his jar and the noise had been caused by a flapping blind. When the doctor arrived he didn’t see 1 ilkins, but he heard him swear very distinctly three blocks away, and those neighbors who were up say he hasn’t put forth his soul in such energetic and hearty a manner before since his interview with the assessors some moons ago.— Somerville Journal.

A Veracious Man.

Judge—What is your opinion of the veracity of the plaintiff? Witness—l have the highest opinion of it, sir. J. —Upon what grounds do you base your opinion ? W.—On the very best. J.—The court desires to hear them. W.—Well, your Honor, I saw him on the strfeet one day, and he had a black eye. I asked how he got it, and what do you think he said? J.—Got it splitting kindling wood for his wife, of course. A piece flew up and hit him. W.— No, your Honor. He says he got it in a fight. What does your Honor think of that? J.—l think the bare word of such a man should be taken. I find for the plaintiff.— Boston Courier. On the Devonshire coast in England a sea grass (Porphyra laciniati) is boiled, chopped, mixed with a small proportion of oatmeal, and made into bread, which keeps from four to eight days, and is much used by the pool Welch people, most of it being sent to Swansea.

REPORTS ABOUT THE CORN.

Indications that the Crop’Ts Well Past Any Serious Danger ol Fpost. The Farmers' Review, of Chicago, has been gathering reports from the corn-grow-j ing States, of which the following is a sum- ■ mary: The corn crop had a week of hot and crowding weather, and the majority of the reports received at the close of the last week indicate that the crop is well past any | serious danger of frost. In portions oi I Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, lowa, and Wisconsin the grain is already sufficiently matured to resist any injury from light frosts. The general aveiages indicated by the reports during the last four weeks have not changed in any particular, degree. In a general way the prospects are still very good for a full average yield in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Minnesota. The average prospective yield is lowest in Illinois, AV isconsin, Missouri, and lowa, and ranges low in Kansas and Nebraska. The average for Illinois, according to reports Irom twenty-two of the principal com-growing counties, is between 62 and 65 per cent., and five of the counties report that the crop is out of all danger irom frost. The most encouraging reports from Illinois come from Lee, Ford, and Morgan Counties, and are the only ones- giving a prospect of a full average yield. The average is the lowest in Edwards and Mercer Counties. In twenty counties of lowa the general average ranges from 59 to 63 percent. In Cass and Carroll Counties the reports show that the crop will give a full average yield. In Madison, Decatur, Marion, and Appanoose Counties the average falls from 20 to 35 per cent, of an average yield. In Kansas the lowest average reported i s 25 per cent, and the highest 100. The average for the State ranges from 66 to 72 per cent. In Missouri the average for the fifteen scattered counties falls below 50 per cent., with a general average of 58 per cent. In Wisconsin some of the- counties indicate very low averages. In Grant, Fond du Lac, and Sheboygan Counties the yield is placed at from ten to. fifteen bushels an acre. The average for the State runs very low. Fully one-half of the counties in Minnesota predict a full average yield. In Pipestone County the average yield promises to be the largest ever raised in that county In Miehigan the yield will be nearly a full average, and in Indiana will probably exceed the yieldof a year ago. In Nebraska the yield will bo fully 85 per cent, of an average yield. The reports continue to indicate that early plan ed potatoes promise a fair yield, while nearly all late-planted pota oes are very poor, indicating generally less than one-fourth the usual yield. The average for the total crop will exceed very little more than one-half the usual yield. Late rains have improved the pastures somewhat in lowa and Illinois, where the grass in many sections is reported short but green. In other large sections pastures are reported dry and short and cattle lean. In many portions of Illinois, Missouri, ' lowa, Minnesota, and Kansas com is being cut in large quantities for fodder. Hogs are reported light but gen n rally healthy. Hog cholera is reported in Jasper County. Illinois, and in Osage County’, Missouri, hogs are dying from an unknown disease.

BLAINE’S FAVORITE SON.

He Is Secretly Married in New York to a Young Catholic Girl. INewYork telegram.] James G. Blaine, Jr., youngest son of ex-Senator James G. Blaine, was married in the rectory of St. Lios Roman Catholic Church in this city, last Monday afternoon, to Miss Marie Nevins, daughter of Col. Richard Nevins, of Columbus, Ohio. The ceremony was performed by the Rev. Father Thomas J. Ducey, pastor of the church. There was no one else present. Young Mr. Blaine is the favorite son of his distinguished father. He is about 20 years old, and has not yet completed his col I ( giate course. Mr. Frank Nevins, the youngest son of Col. Nevins, has been in business at Augusta, Me., for several months past. His sister Mar.e visited him in Augusta during the last summer, and there met for the first time, her husband. Miss Nevins spent several weeks at Augusta and Bar Harbor, where she joined her parents, returning to this city with them a week ago la-t Friday. They took rooms here at the New York Hotel. It is understood that Mr. Blaine followed very soon after Miss Nevins’ departure from Maine, and was the guest of her parents at the hotel. Mr. Blaine applied to Archbishop Corrigan on Saturday, September!, fora dispensation, Miss Nevins being a Ca’holic. Miss Nevins then for the first time informed her family, and with her happy young husband started for Aui-usta to apprise his father. Miss Nevins is nineteen years old. She has fair hair, a handsome presence, and an exceptionally beautiful face. She is said by her friends to be a woman of many brilliant mental and social accomplishments. She is a member of one of the oldest and most distinguished families of Ohio.

IMPENDING STARVATION.

By the Failure of the Labrador Fisheries Thousands Are Made Destitute. [Halifax (N. 8.) dispatch.) Alfred B. Morrine, member of the Newfoundland Legislature for Bonavista, now here, says: “The Labrador fisheries are an entire failure; at their best they afford but a bare subsistence Thirty thousand people go from Newfoundland to Labrador for ti*h eveiy year. This year they have not caught enough to pay the cost of transportation and supplies. At least 20,000 more people are dependent upon the success of the above-mentioned 30,000. The total failure of the shore fishery this year renters 70,000 people destitute, only 20,000 of those depending upon them being pr pared to sta d the loss of a year’s labor. The peop’e have barely enough for the present necessities, and no means of earning a dollar. The only relief to this picture is the fact that ti e potato crop, the only crop raised on the island, is turning out well, and will yield about a peck per head of population. This seems highly colored, in Y.ew of the recent fabrications of starvation stories among the Labrador Esquimaux, but it is the pla n English of actual facts and inevitable consequences.”

INDIANA STATE NEWS.

—About twelve miles west of Shoals, Jacob Jones, a young man, was shot and instantly killed by Stephen Miles. The difficulty grew out of an old-time fend. Jones, it seems, was angry at the whole Miles family, and about two months ago he caught Vincenti Miles, a brother of Stephen, and beat him brutally with brass knucks. Since that time Jones has, on several occasions, gone to. Vincent Mile’s residence and abused and blackguarded his wife. The men met’recently, no one being present but the two Mileses, Stephen and Vincent, and Jones. As soon as they met, Jones drew his revolver and snapped it at Vincent Miles-. two or three times. Stephen, trying as best he could to prevent Jones killing Lis brother, finally discharged a load of shot into his abdomen, killing him instantly. —Recently Chesley L.. Vent, of Scott County, was crossing a. pasture on his farm when a Jersey bull attacked him and gored him so badly that he bled to death from the wound in his side. Shortly after B. H. Vest, a brother of the dead man, was thrown from a wagon, amd had his neck broken. A short time after Mrs. Chesley Vest received a slight cut, which ordinarily would have amounted to little, but owing to the trouble so suddenly thrown upon the family she gave way and is not expected to live. Just one year before the day upon which Chesley; A'eat met his death his son Morrison’s head was completely torn from his shoulders by the explosion of a gun which he was loading. —The synodical meeting of the AVoman’a Home and Foreign Missionary societies of the Presbyterian Church will be held in Fort AVayne, October 20 and 21. About three hundred ladies will bo in attendance, and workers from China, India, Japan, Mexico, and among the freedmen and the Mormons, now home on a furlough, will be present; A museum of foreign curiosities will be under the management of Mis. M. C. Garvin, and a bazaar of Syrian and Egyptian articles will be attended by a native Egyptian.’ girl. —Hog cholera of a very malignant typo is making devastating ravages among the farmers of Hendricks County. Washington , Township has the worst sufferers. In some instances droves of hogs numbering from , eighty to 100 head have been stricken with i the disease* amd all have died. Farmers are greatly discouraged, as they hoped to > realize considerably from their hogs this., year, being blessed with a bountiful corn, crop. Their loss in this county will amount! to many thousand dollars.

—ln order to do some drilling and blasting in the AVabash River nt Logansport,.a; dam was built above the island at that place, and all the water sent around by the south side.. As the water flowed out ofitho north branch thousands of fish were disclosed to view,and hundreds of men,women, and children, armed with every conceivable kind of implement, took advantage of the occasion to lay in a stock of brain food for winter use. One man secured a fortypound catfish. —Hogs are so plenty in New Albany that they sometimes impede locomotion. A young girl, arrayed in white, , was going into the front gate of a neighbor’s, house, when, a venerable porker that hadi invaded the place ran out of the gateway, between the ] edal extremities of the girl, making a wreck of her dress and knocking her down. She was not severely injured, but was almost scared to death. —Lithographic stone, from a quarry near Fayetteville, Lawrence County, has been tested by lithographers at Chicago* and is pronounced as good as the German, stone. They offer to pay for all this stone shipped to Chicago the same price they now pay for the stone imported from Germany. This is the only stone thus far found in the United States as good as the German stone. —lt is now believed that the man who recently disappeared from near New Providence, was murdered. The fellow and his family, who were suspected, have suddenly left the place. A posse of men searching the neighborhood found a grave, which, however, had recently been robbed of its inmate.

—A harp, together with 500 bushels of wheat, and all the farming implements on the farm of Frank Grimwood, in Scott Township, Vanderberg County, were destroyed by fire on Sunday night. Loss, $2,500; no insurance. The bam was set on fire by tramps. —Black diphtheria is very prevalent at Logansport, and the Journal, of that city* asks the health board to resign because they allow public funerals of the victims and otherwise neglect sanitary measures. Ten new cases were reported in one day. —A pretty 18-year-old Terre Haute girl asked permission to go to a picnic, and, because her mother refused to grant the request, she took a large dose of morphine with suicidal intent. Prompt medical attention saved her life. —Au old blind soldier of Jefferson County has received news that his pension claim has been allowed at the rate of $72 per month. He will receive, to start with, $11,764. He has been prosecuting this case ever since 1869. —AVhile digging in the clay pit of a tile factory on a farm eleven miles west of Kokomo, at New London, a man excavated the teeth of a large mastodon, one of which weighed five pounds and measured nineteen inches around. —The migratory birds are said to be leaving the northern part of the State for a warmer latitude a full month earlier than ever known before, and the weather prophets are therefore predicting an early winter.