Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 August 1889 — QUAY’S DIRTY METHODS. [ARTICLE]

QUAY’S DIRTY METHODS.

THE DEMOCRATIC SOCIETIES AND THEIR WORK. The Pennsylvania Boodler Hopes to Extend His Corrupt Methods to the New States—A New Force Coiuinf to the Service of the Democratic Party. [Washington letter to New York Globe.] The dullness of this town is a little relieved by the gossip about the organization of the next House and the elections in the new States. The threat of a combination of Southern Republican members to compel terms’ on the election of Speaker, and so to bring Harrison to his senses, produced a genuine fright among the ' faithful. The power of the scalawags to do this very thing is so palpable that the mention of it makes the Republican leaders quake in their shoes. But such, in this party of great moral ideas, is the supreme reliance upon the virtue of patronage and plunder, that they are speedily reassured. But the fear of disaster in the new States is a different matter. The Federal offices are so few and so ill-paid that administrative patronage will count for little there. And the interests of the people are so plainly on the side of tariff reform that Mr. Harrison, Mr. Quay, Mr. Dudley and all the excellent gentlemen who carried the last election by the process now known as “wanamakering” are very painfully exercised over the possibility of a catastrophe. They have come to the conclusion that the people out there must be dealt with by the last resource of monopolists, which, being interpreted, means boodle. Accordingly, the money left over from the purchase of the Presidency, and such other sums as can be raised, will be applied to save the fruits of the victory of last fall by preventing the lapse of the new States to the Democracy. And it is a fact worth mentioning that Mr. Quay’s organization for active political work is as perfect as it ever was. He has the means and the igents to do just as clever a job in the new States as he did last fall in the old States of New York and Indiana. Meanwhile the Democrats do nothing. They do nothing about the new States, because in the first instance it would be undemocratic to meddle from Washington or Nev York in the local elections of those communities. But they do nothing anywhere for the sufficient reason that they have no means to do anything with. Their fight, wherever it is made, in the East or in the West, in the North or in the South, must be the fight of the people themselves, and with their awn resources, against the tremendous aggregation of monopolies which confronts them. But a new force is coming to the service, not of the Democratic party as such, but to the support of Democratic principles. This is composed of men who are not partisans, for the most part, not even politicians. They are simply tariff reformers—some of them for business reasons, but most of them from pure conviction and principle. They are radicals, more extreme than the rank and file of the Democracy, more resolute and more active. They expect to leaven the whole lump of this great national party, and in the West their work is certainly beginning to tell. The Tariff Reform Con-’ vention last January in Chicago exerted an immense influence, and set many non-partisan agencies at work. A Chicago Democrat, discussing this situation, says: The Democratic party can take no step backward. It must go forward on the lines of the Cleveland message, and most likely further still than the limits of the Cleveland policy. The tendency not only among the radical reformers, but among strict partisan Democrats, is toward organization, not merely for ordinary party work, but for the specific purpose of agitating, and agitating remorselessly, this pressing tariff question until it is settled with some regard to the interests of the common people. Never before have the Democrats continued their labors so generally and with so much ardor after a national defeat as they are doing now. And they are not forming the old regulation club. They are establishing the Democratic society, and thus, with the principles of Jefferson, they are readopting the method of agitation and of practical work by which those principles were sustained by our forefathers. Every Democrat believes in Jefferson. Every tariff-ieformer, whether .ormerly a Republican or not, also believes in Jefferson. Even Mr. Henry George’s single-tax men regard Jefferson as a sort of John the Baptist to Mr. George. And, as the Democratic society if, built upon Jefferson as the single rock of its all these classes meet in it upon common ground. It is surprising how many of these societies are being formed, especially in remote districts, where the country people are incl ned to follow Mr. Randall’s advice, and "get together.’ Most of them, it is probable, are never reported to any headquarters, and never heard of, except in the neighborhood where they exist. Half a dozen men will form a society. They talk about the effects of the tariff upon their particular industries, upon the prices of farm implements, clothing, furniture, transportation, and upon the markets for 1 arm products. When they can do nothing better, they read speeches or essays or newspapers. And thus is formed a center of discussion. It gradually increases in numbers and in knowledge, until it becomes an aggressive and powerful agency q' tariff reform. Some of these societies hav> been formed in the new States. If ther# Uere only enough of them in that vast fertile region—which we owe to the foresight of Mr. Jefferson—Mr. Quay never had money enough in his treasury to wanamaker their elections! The people take to these societies because they are Democratic, and with the Western States fairly organized in this popular form, as may possibly be the case next year, the political revolution, which will take place in the Congressional elections, will be something unprecedented in the history of the country.