Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 October 1892 — Elwood. [ARTICLE]

Elwood.

How like a pair of clowns McKinley and Chase must have appeared at Elwood, Ind. Each the Governor of a proud, respectable and wealthy State, lending hlmeelf and his office and whatever dignity his manhood has won, to the most barefaced fake that ever was projected. Never a shell-worker on circus day, greeting the granger with the level eye of simulated honesty, aever a thimble-rigger with his pretense of fair dealing and his practice of theft, more faithfully played a confidence game than was played on the Indiana town by the leading Republicans of this nation. Not a feature in the whole business from beginning to end but ehames the decent men who lent themselves to the patent swindle. There is no truth nor honesty nor solidity in the Elwood mills, and the greenest spectator who waded in the yellow mud, or singed his whiskers in the natural gas torch, or loafed unconscious in the dripping rain, but knows it in hisheait. Henceforth the name of Elw od will take the plaee of the scarcely honorable “boom” in ojr language. It is boom with nothing behind it but that which always lurks behind ihe boom—the wary sharper with a waiting trap. Of course, the United States of America can plant a tin-mill at Elwood, and us'i run -i w.tli a thousand hands iora

hundred years. They can will the product for 60 cents a box and pay ihe freight. They can mako glass bottles Ud blow tbs buyer’s portrait In the; sfaS. • They can manufacture window’ panes, and build a railroad as straight as an arrow’s flight to connect the mills and the monkey who swears by them. Sixty millions of people, with treasure such as these people possess, can do almost anything they wish. But that doesn’t prove that the business will pay. If the Elwooi mills should prove a permanent establishment—which they will not; If they should work their imported men and their transplanted machinery on their imported tin to the fullest capacity for the next ten years, and All our markets wilh American tin, it would only prove that the American people permitted themselves to be robbed. If tin can be made in this country and sold in competition with tin from abroad, then it is a sound business and a profitable addition to the industries of America. If Americans must keep up the margin of loss between the price at which it can be sold and the price at which the importe 1 article can be so’d, then Americans simply throw away their money. The manufacturer compels an unnatural profit by robbing the purchaser of more than the article purchased was worth. By stealing a little from each citizen and adding the stealings together the manufacturer can conduit a losing business in any line. And that Is all that is contemplated at Elwood.—Chicago Herald.