Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 September 1886 — PLAIN TALK. [ARTICLE]

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.