Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 August 1889 — Page 3

THE PRICE OF VICTORY.

SECRETS OF THk INDIANA CAMPAIGN COMING TO EIGHT. A Letter from a Hoosier Politician Showing that the State Was Bought for Harrison, Who Lives in Terror Lest Details Should Reach the Public. [Washington special to Chicago Herald.] An interesting letter was received today by an Indiana man temporarily sojourning in Washington from one of his friends at Indianapolis. It is a letter which throws some light on the methods of the Republicans in the last campaign and on the anxiety of President Harrison to suppress all statements tending to rouse curiosity concerning the use of money in carrying Indiana. The statements made in the letter given herewith may be relied upon as absolutely correct: Indianapolis, July 23. —Some of the granger members of our Republican State Committee were greatly surprised at the proceedings had in the secret meeting of the committee last * week. Chairman Huston made a little speech ■on resigning the chairmanship, and for a peroration declared he was ready to account to the committee for all the funds in his possession • and turn the same over to the Treasurer. He then reached down and picked up a small handbag which he had brought into the room with him, and from this he began taking big stacks of currency. A friend of mine, who is a member of the committee, says the eyes of. the country members bulged out as they saw the large sum of ready cash which Mr. Huston drew from his bag—more money than some of them had ever seen in their lives. The amount was 910,900, and the new Treasurer of the committee was so much surprised by the sight of such a big pile of stuff that he receipted for it without a count. Huston was warmly praised for his honesty and fidelity in handling the committee funds, and is said to have left the room because the members were so enthusiastic in their compliments. I am informed by a member of the committee that this sum of 810,000 was left over out of a total amount of 8425,900 handled by Huston in Indiana last year. All but thirty or forty thousand of this came from the East, as Indiana contributions were small and scarce. This sum of $425,000 was handled by Huston personally, and every dollar put where it would do the most good. Remittances were made him from the East in his own name, and not a dollar of the money that was used for the “blocks of five” passed through the hands of the committee in the regular way. Hu st on carried the money .on his person all through the campaign, as the funds were such that he did not dare put them in bank. That was a responsibility which I Should not have cared to take. Would you ? This method of Huston’s in handling the money explains why ho was not called before the Grand Jury that was investigating the election. Scores of prominent Republicans', members of the State Committee, county committeemen, and others were summoned before the Democratic jury, but Huston was not called. The Prosecuting’ Attorney had received a tip that such a call would do him no good, for Huston was ready and even anxious to go into court with the books of the State Committee under his arm. By these books he would have shown where every dollar used by the committee had come from and where and for what purpose expended. All this represented the ordinary expenses of the committee for speakers,printing, etc. If the jury had asked Huston for. a statement concerning his personal finances or other moneys that passed through his hands, he would have' declined to answer, standing on his right to keep silent where testimony was likely to incriminate himself. Another phase of the story which may interest you is told by some of the Michen'er and Ransdell fellows, who are the personal representatives of the President, and inclined to throw stones at Huston. They say Huston, proud of the success he had won in the campaign, aud of the fact that he had a large enough balance left to set the committee up in business for another year, was determined to go before the committee and make a full statement of the financial operations during his chairmanship, and give this statement to the press. Of course this statement would have covered only the ordinary expenditures, and had nothing to say about what was done with the hundreos of thousands of dollars handled by Huston personally, and of which no record was ever made. But' Harrison wouldn’t listen even to that much. He would have no public report made at all, and his representatives here say it took him two hours to talk Huston over to his vay of thinking. Said one of them to me: “But f. r the President Huston might have been just fool enough to have blurted right out in meeting the fact that ne bought Indiana and that it cost us pretty nearly a half million of dollars to do it.” Hanison knows Indiana was bought just as well as we do, and he is Jiving in mortal terror lest the facts should come out. He wants the country to believe it was his popularity that carried the • State, while we all know it was ths skill with which the large sum of money sent here from the East was handled that saved him from an inglorious defeat at home. Some of the President’s friends here are talking too much about the manner in which Harrison sat down on Huston’s plan to make a public report, and it is stirring up some hard feelings. If the boys get to quarreling, the public may yet get all the facts, even though Harrison pleads to have them suppressed. Personally I don’t believe Huston would have said an indiscreet word in making his public report, but Harrison is so timid and so awfully afraid that the facts about Indiana will get out, that he wouldn’t let Huston say a word about finances. Another bit of gossip which you may be glad to hear is that among the Republicans who gathered here during the meeting of the State Committee Harrison is looked upon as a single termer. The talk here is that the President does not want to run again, and in good time will make an announcement of his intention to retire. He is not as popular here as he was before he became President, and that isn’t saying much.

When asked to-night about the statements made in the foregoing letter, ex-Chairman Huston said it was a matter which he could not talk about. The managing members of the National Republican Committee are preparing for another campaign of boodle. This time they expect to drive voters to the polls in blocks of fity instead of five. In a little more than a month a special election for Congressman is to be held in the Third Louisiana District, and the Republicans want that member. It has been decided to send •down a number of speakers of national reputation, and Senator Allison and Congressman McKinley are named as among those who have consented to go. This campaign of speakers and brass bands is to be used as a cover for the operations of the Executive Committee, probably under the direct management of Colonel Dudley. The district has a negro majority of 4,000, and ordinarily the Republicans should have no difficulty in carrying it, but the colored brother is now in a state of discontent, and vows his intent to have revenge upon the administration that has denied him a crust of patronage when he is hungry. Chairman Herwig, of the Louisiana Republican Committee; who has grown rich out of the Louisiana lottery, says he is willing to put up $25,000 to elect the Republican candidate, who will probably be exCongressmen Darrall. To this sum the National Committee is expected to add a liberal donation, and with $40,000 or $50,000 the Republicans are expecting io capture all the negro preachers and

plantation politicians in the district. In the rotten-borough politics of the Southern States the colored preachers carry the votes of the blacks in their pockets, and the efforts of the Republican National Committee to carry Northern boodle methods into the parishes of Louisiana will make a spectacle worth going miles to see.

Defending Monopoly.

We have recently observed in a number of newspapers calling themselves “agricultural journals,” but which are really defenders of monopoly built up by the tariff, the preposterous statement that the way to break the twine trust, and the bagging trust, and the salt trust, etc., is to raise all the articles ourselves. This is absurd, we say, because, even with a high duty on hemp, and on all substitutes for hemp, such as sisal, hemp culture is only profitable to a few farmers in Kentucky and Missouri. Is it just that every man who raises wheat should pay a heavy tax that a few farmers in Kentucky and Missouri may raise hemp on acres which would, except for the tariff, be put in grass, in wheat, in corn, or tobacco? We say no; the Farm and Fireside says yes. During the past four years the duty paid on sisal imported to make twine amounts to $2,000,000. That is added to the price of twine. The Mills bill wisely put sisal on the free list; that is, it proposed to abolish the tax of $2,000,000. The Senate bill proposed to raise the duty from sls to S3O a ton, or from $500,000 to $1,000,000 a year. The Mills bill proposes to reduce the tax on twine; the Allison bill proposes to increase it. Farmers and agricultural journals should demand that twine and bagging be put on the iree list. This does not please the Farm and Fireside, which comes out as a fullfledged defender of monopoly. It says: Home and Farm goes on to say that if we had no tariff every advance in price would draw Ihe foreign article to America, and also that, except for the tariff, twine would be imported and the trust broken—all of which is false and absurd. The twine trust, having control of the raw material, controls both the ioreign and the home manuufacture and sale of twine. To remove the duties now would not necessarily make twine any cheaper. There is no cheap foreign twine to be drawn to this country. The trust controls it all, and if the tariff were removed, under the existing conditions, the manufacturers could simply put that much more into their pockets. Whatever effect the removal of tariff duties might have on some other trusts, it could have none, at the present time, on the twine trust. Our Springfield critic is wrong as usual. There has been a failure of crops everywhere and a natural advance, but the price to-day in America is higher by 25 per cent, because of a tariff-protected trust, and always will be.

If putting twine on the free list would not reduce the price, why did the manufacturers oppose it, and why do the manufacturers’ organs, masquerading as agricultural journals, oppose to-day a removal of the tax on the farmers ? If the tariff is not a tax on the consumer, if it does not increase the cost of twine to the farmer, who pays back to the manufacturer the $491,654 he paid in 1888 for the 32,776 tons of sisal grass he manufactured to make twine ? There is but one answer to these questions; the tariff is imposed for this purpose; if it failed, the manufacturers would be the first to demand its repeal. We hold that it does not fail; it adds one burden after another to the shoulders of the farmer, and we insist that these burdens be lifted. Our Springfield contemporary insists that the weaker a person becomes the more he should be bled. We point out the deplorable condition of the patient; we show how his strength is wasted, and his energies gone; how with difficulty he drags his weary feet dow r n the weary furrow. Give him rest, we say; remove the stumps from his path; give him nourishment, cheapen for him the comforts of life, and so enrich his blood, and build up his system. “No,” says the organ of monopoly at Springfield; “no; phlebotomy is the only remedy; bleed him; bleed him every day; open every vein. His blood is too rich; it courses through his veins too swiftly; let’s bleed him, and if he dies, he will die a glorious martyr to the system of protection; and while every trust will mourn his loss, the ever-present mortage will seize his farm, while his family will be protected —in the poor-house.”— Home and Farm.

The Surplus and the Banks.

Apropos of the statement of Secretary Windom, that “the great bulk of the surplus is in the hands of the banks, to be used by the people,” and that “the money in the banks is about the same as when Mr. Fairchild was Secretary of the Treasury,” it might be pertinent for the organs to reproduce some of the able articles they printed during the late campaign abusing Mr. Fairchild for these deposits. It is true that the policy is indisputably the right one under existing circumstances, and that Mr. Windom should be praised for not disturbing it; but it is no more right now than it was a year ago when the Republican organs insisted that it was w’rong. — Philadelphia Times.

Protected to Death.

The w'oolen mills which furnished the village of Versailles, Conn., with its principal industry has been almost literally wiped out of existence under the last sizing up by the creditors. The people of the once prosperous village might nail a sign over the doors, “Protected to Death.”— Boston Globe

A CITY ALMOST RUINED.

SPOKANE FALLS, WASH. TER., DEVASTATED BY FIKE. V. Conflagration that Baffled the Fire Department and Burned to the Water's Edge—The Losses Will Aggregate 514,OOO.OOO—AwfuI Work of the Devastating Element. A Spokane Falls (W. T.) dispatch of the 6th inst. says: The entire business portion of the city, with the exception of one mill, was destroyed by fire Sunday night The loss will reach $11,000,000 .The blaze started in (a lodgng house on Railway avenue at 5 o’clock in the evening and burned until Monday morning. A large number of frame buildings and several grain elevators were near the lodging house and soon after the fire broke out they were ablaze. A strong wind was blowing toward the city at the time, and the blaze was soon beyond the control of the firemen. The fire leaped from street to street and nothing could be done but let the flames have their own way until they reached the river and then endeavor to prevent the fire from reaching the buildings on the opposite side. The flames swept through the city and one business block after another was consumed, everything being burned to the water’s edge. The fire department was stationed on the other side of the stream and prevented flying embers from setting fire to the buildings there. Only a few dwellings were destroyed, as the residence portion of the city was not visited by the fire. The water supply proved totally inadequate, and firemen as well as citizens became panic-stricken. Several people are known to have perished in the flames and several more were injured by leaping from windows. Charles Davis of Chicago, a guest at the Arlington house, was awakened by flames bursting through the doors of his room in the third story. He jumpted from the window, was shockingly mangled, and died In a few minutes.

A woman whose name is unknown leaped from the second story of the Pacific hotel and was killed. The fire spread with such astonishing rapidyf that it is believed many were shut off from escape before they were aware of their danger. By order of the Mayor a dozen large buildings were blown up with giant powder, but even this failed to check the flames. The Northern Pacific is probably the heaviest loser, the passenger depot and magnificent new freight warehouse being destroyed. Its loss, including freight burned, will reach about $1,000,000. All provisions and supplies were burned, and there will be much suffering for several days. Appeals for help have been sent out, and Portland, Seattle, Tacoma, and several neighboring towns have already responded. The fire started at 7 o’clock p. m. in a lodging house on Railroad avenue. The fire department was on the scene quickly, but owing to a lack of water the fire spread to an adjoining frame building, and was soon beyond control. The flames jumped across the street to the Russ house and Pacific hotel. By this time a strong wind sprung up, and it was evident the city was doomed. The fire spread with fearful rapidity and the firemen were powerless. An attempt was made to check the fire by blowing up buildings in its path, but it was useless. From the Pacific hotel the fire jumped across First street to the frame buildings in the next block. Soon it reacL-jd the heart of the city. A block of two-story brick buildings on Riverside avenue next went. From here the fire was communicated to the magnificent Hyde block, a four-story building, taking in the whole block between Mills and Howard streets on Riverside avenue. The fire leaped across Howard street, and in a few minutes the block between Howard and Stevens streets was reduced to ashes. The next to succumb was the large Tull block. From there the fire swept the solid block ®f four-story brick buildings, including the postofllce, between Stevens and Washington streets, and here burned out from lack of material. From the point of beginning the fire took another direction, leaping across Sprague street to the Opera House block. From it the flames leaped Riverside avenue to Brown’s bank and both sides of the avenue were in flames. The block between Post and Mill streets was quickly licked up, including the Grand hotel. From here the flames were communicated to the block on the right. Here was the Frankfort block, the largest building in -the city, having cost $250,000. It withstood the fire for some time, but finally succumbed. The Arlington hotel was next to go. From the Arlington the fire traveled north and consumed the block between Howard, Main, Front, and Stevens streets, burning east as far as the latter street, where a vacant lot checked further progress in that direction. Everything in a northerly direction, including the Northern Pacific express. Union block, and Windsor hotel, was soon a mass of flames. The river prevented the fire doing further damage and was a means of saving big flouring and lumber mills. By this time, in the short space of three hours, the fire had consumed everything in its path, reducing to ashes the entire busib ess portion of the once beautiful city. The only business block left standing is the

Crescent building, which was saved by tearing down intervening buildings Owing to the rapidity with which it spread scarcely anything was saved. Provisions are scarce and will last only a short time. The city council met this morning and appointed a committee on relief. Provisions will be sent for and the needy supplied. Individual losses as far as known are as follows: Honey, Mason. Marks & Co., wholesale hardware $125,000; the Great Eastern whole-ale p aud retail dry-goods house, $100,000; the “White House,” wholesale and retail, $80,0 ( K); Lowenburg Bros., $100,900; Benham Ar Griffiths, wholesale grocers, $40,000; Mason, Smith & Co., grocers, $40,000: Pacific hotel, $40,000; Grand hotel, $10,000; Windsor, $25,000; Hyde block, $75,900; Washington block, $65,000; Crescent, $30,000; Cannon block, $20,000, Moore block, $30,000; First national bank block, $25,000; Wolverton block, $25,000: Frankfort block, $125,000; Tull block, $75,000. The disaster is undoubtedly far more serious than that which overtook Beattie, both on account of its great extent and the more substantial character of the burned buildings. No account of losses has yet been received. The Western Union office was burned out and all instruments except one, which an operator is now working on a dry goods box just outside the city, were destroyed. All the flour and lumber mills were saved. Bpokane was one of the most prominent of the many new cities in the infant State of Washington. Situated on the line of the Northern Pacific railroad close to the Cceur d’Alene mining region, the city has been the site for manyTarge industrial establishments, such as smelters and kindred enterprises. Expensive public edifices had also been recently erected, and the population was easily supporting two prosperous daily papers. The business district of Spokane was in a strip between the Northern Pacific railroad tracks and the Spokane river. This strip was five squares across, and extended about seven squares in length. It was solidly built up with brick and stone structures, the. cost of which varied

SPOKANE FALLS BEFORE THE FIRE.

from $25,000 to $125,000. . Ten banking houses, five hotels, the opera house, and many whoisale establishments doing business estimated at half a million dollars each, were situated within the district described. The estimate of a $30,000,000 loss is believed to be exaggerated. Half that amount is thought to be nearer the actual figure, assuming that the reported complete destruction of the city is correct. The population of Spokane is about 20,000. The city possessed an excellent water works, modeled after the Holly system, with a capacity of 9,000,000 gallons. There were no fire engines, but by the system in use five or six goodsized streams of water could be concentrated upon any block in case of fire. The fire department was a volunteer one. As to insurance the best information here is that no largo amounts were carried. Buildings that cost $30,000 to $40,000 are known to have had but $9,000 to SIO,OOO insurance.

Washington, Aug. 4.—A telegram has been received at the Navy Department announcing the death at 1 o’clock Saturday afternoon at the hospital in the Naval Home, Philadelphia, of Commodore William JE. Fitzhugh, of a complication of diseases. Commodore Fitzhugh was born in Ohio, Oct. 18, 1832, and graduated from the naval academy in 1854. He served in the Atlantic and Pacific souadrons prior to the war, and was made a Lieutenant Commodore in 1862. He commanded the Iroquois, of the North Atlantic blockading squadron, was present at the capture of Fort Morgan in 1864, and as commander of the Ouchati received the surrender of the Confederate naval forces on Red river. Since the war he has filled various stations on sea and shore, being promoted to a Captaincy in 1876, and to be Commodore in 1878.

Bold Diamond Bobbery at Kansas City.

Knnsas City, Mo., Aug. 4.—At 2 o’clock Friday afternoon a well-dressed man riding a sorrel horse rode up to Altman’s jewelry store at 718 Main street. He dismounted, letting the horse stand without hitching, and went into the.stere. He asked to look at some diamonds which had been shown him the previous day. The tray was handed to him, when he grabbed a handful and made a daeh for the door. He sprung for his horse, but the animal became frightened and dashed off down the street. The robber ran to the corner, where he jumped into a hack and drove rapidly away, pursued by the police. He has not been captured. The diamonds are estimated at $15,000.

Ottawa, Can., Aug. 4.—Sir J. R. Somers Vine of London, England, one of the secretaries of the imperial institute, is here on business for the government. He recently arrived at Vancouver from Australia. Speaking of the question of annexation of Canada to the United States, he said he found that the government of British Columbia was so bitterly opposed to any such idea that the province would secede from the dominion and maintain herself as a separate co’ony before hearing of auy such movement.

Commodore Fitzhugh Dead.

Opposed to Annexation.

What a Cloudburst Is.

The phenomena of a cloudburst, which can only occur in a tornado or whirlwind, arc not generally understood, says the New York Herald. The whirl in which it forms is not a very broad and shallow’ disk, but a tall, columnar mass of rotating air, similar to that in which the Atlantic waterspout or the famous pillar-like dust storm of India is generated. While this traveling aerial pillar, perhaps a few hundred yards in diameter, is rapidly gyrating, the centrifugal force, as Prof. FerreJ has shown, acts as a barrier to prevent the flow of external air from all its interior, except at and near the base of the pillar. There friction with the earth, retards the gyrations and allows the air to rush in below and escape upward through the flue-like interior as jiowerful ascending currents. The phenomenon, however, will not be attended by terrific floods unless the atmosphere is densely stored with watefr vapor, as it was on Tuesday in the Cayadutta Valley, and as it was on May 31 in the Conemaugh Valley. When such is the case, the violent ascending currents suddenly lift the va-por-laden clouds several thousand feet above the level at which they were previously floating, and hurl them aloft into rarefied and cold regions of the atmosphere, where their vapor is instantly condensed into many tons of water. Could the water fall as fast as condensed it would be comparatively harmless. But the continuous uprushing currents support this mass of water at high level, and as their own vast volumes of vapor rising are condensed they add to the water already accumulated thousands of feet above the earth’s surface—making, so to speak, a lake in high air. As the whirlwind weakens or passes from beneath this vast body of water, which its ascending currents have generated and upheld in the upper story of the atmosphere, the aqueous mass, no longer supported, drops with everincreasing gravitational force to the earth. In severe cloud bursts the water does not fall as rain, but in sheets and streams, sometimes unbroken for many seconds. The cloud burst of 1838 at Hullidavsburg, Pa., excavated many holes in tne ground,varying from twenty-five to thirty feet in diameter, and from three to six feet deep. In a similar but milder storm, which visited Boulogne last May, fissures were cut in the streets eight feet deep and openings made large enough to engulf a horse and cart.

An Old Boatman’s Lament.

An elderly grizzled man sat on the string of a wharf below Coenties slip the other evening just as it was growing dark, and gazed in a melancholy sort of a way over the several acres of canal boats lying in that part of the East river, says the New York Mail and Express. “Things is gettin’ wuss and wuss here all the time,” he remarked at last to a companion. “How is that?” inquired the listener. “How? How enuff,” was the gruff response. “Hev ye seen a fight ’round 1 here fer more’n a week ? Of course ye ain’t. I ain’t seed but one in more’n a month, and that wuzn’t a good one. I kin remember w’en we us’ter have ’em every night—two or three of ’em! Yes, sir; b’gosh! an’ they wuz good ones, too, “But there ain’t no more fun ’round here any more. There ain’t nothin’. Why, if you listen you can’t hear a sound on any of them boats; nary a sound. W’y, I kin remember a few years ago, w’en you could hear fifty ’cordeens goin’ on them boats. Every cannier that wuzn’t a fighter had a ’cordeen or a poll parrot, and es you did’t care for fightin’, why, you could have a dance on the dock or some of the boats, while the cap’n played on the ’cordeen. Similarly, if you wanted fightin’, yer could have oceans of it. “But there ain’t no more of it,” continued the veteran, with a sigh. “There ain’t no fightin’, there ain’t no parrots, there ain’t no ’cordeens nor dancin’, there ain’t no fun, there ain’t no nothin’. and b’gosh! I think I’ll give up the hull thing an’ go to drivin’ a truck.” With this the old man struck his pipe so viciously against the string piece that the head of it broke off and fell into the water, after which the veteran jAunged into a deep and dejected silence as he meditated on the days that are not any more.

Singing Among Mark Twain’s Flowers.

I was recently sitting in Mark Twain’s home in Hartford, says a writer in the New York Graphic, waiting for the humorist to return from his daily walk. Suddenly sounds of devotional singing came in through the open window from the direction of the outer conservatory. The singing was low, yet the sad tremor in the voice seemed to give it special carrying power. “You have quite a devotional domestic,” I said to a member of the family who came in shortly afterward. “That is not a domestic who is singing,” was the answer. “Step to this window, look in the conservatory and see for yourself.” I did so. There, sitting alone on one of the rustic benches in the flower house, was a small, elderly lady. Keeping time with the first finger of her. right hand, as if with a baton, she was slightly swaying her frail body as she; sang, softly yet sweetly, Charles Wesley’s hymn, “Jesus, Lover of My Soul,” and Sarah Flower Adams’ “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” But the singer was not a domestic. It was Harriet Beecher Stowe! There sat the once brilliant authoress like a child crooning a favorite air.