Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 September 1892 — Harrison’s Western Trip. [ARTICLE]

Harrison’s Western Trip.

As Harrison is going to Chicago to make a speech at the dedication of the World’s Fair grounds he proposes to adopt his usual tactics and make a stumping tour of his trip. He has done this repeatedly. He stumped his way across the continent, and on his return he stumped

New England for renomination on pretense that he was merely visiting it to help dedicate a monument. He is now making preparations to orate in Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and as many other Western States as he can get an excuse for invading with his campaign Ice wagon. While in Chicago Mr. Harrison will be there as President of the United States, but when he starts upon his campaigning tour he becomes Mr. Harrison, the candidate, apolitical aspirant working for his individual advancement. There he the active partisan and open to the opposition which his position invites. In this connection it is naturally recalled that one Andrew Johnson visited Chicago some years ago and assisted at laying the corner-stone of a monument erected to the memory of the late Stephen A. Douglas. From that point he began his famous “swing around the circle." Mr. Harrison will also swing around the circle, and it is conceded on every hand that he has a discouraging contract before him. There was a time when the entire Northwest could be counted upon with perfect confidence by the g. o. p. It was in line year in and year out, always reliable and never estimated as even debatable ground. Since then, says the Detroit Free Press, there has been a marked change, and the situation which confronts Candidate Harrison is not an inviting one. Should he visit Wisconsin he will find there a Democratic Governor and a pronounced Democratic sentiment. In Minnesota he will encounter a condition of affairs which induced the Republicans to nominate an out-and-out tariff-reform man because they did not dare take chances with one indorsing the McKinley iniquity as upheld in the national platform of the party. In lowa is a Democratic Governor with a following that disheartens an opposition which once boasted of an overwhelming majority. In Kansas there is a deplorable state of affairs, and should Candidate Harrison reach South Dakota, admitted to the sisterhood of States with a view of strengthening his party, he will realize how fallible is man’s judgement in dealing with an unknown Western quantity. Let the candidate visit Michigan. Here he will strike a Democratic administration, a hopeless division of his own party and a confidence among the Cleveland following that will still further chill the austere statesman from Hoosierdom. It is a desperate situation that induces Candidate Harrison to attempt the proposed swing: and should he fail to make it there will be a disappointment among the Democrats of the land.