Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 249, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 October 1914 — Gives His Reasons For Being Against Now Constitution. [ARTICLE]

Gives His Reasons For Being Against Now Constitution.

Editors Republican: Your question this morning asking if I was for or against the now constitution, and my answer that I had not yet fully made up my mind caused me to read your article more carefully, and I must say that I was much disappointed in it You surely wrote without due consideration of all the consequences. After asserting that it should carry, you say the interests behind it to defeat it are the sinister interests of graft and corruption. I am Sorry you said this, for it means that all who are satisfied with the old constitution, that has made our state what it is, a state of which every Indianian should, he and is proud, and who is not ready to put the old one aside and take up a hew thing, something untried. You say the ministerial association favors a new constitution. Now this is a catch phrase and made doubtless expecting everybody to fall in line. Ifthe ministerial association were clothed with infallibility this statement might have some force, hut since they are very fallible and have never been considered great statesmen, it should be considered as having no more force than had it come from ordinary mortals, and I might say the same of the good citizens* league. You say the breweries, the bosses, the grafters, are against it and that false statements are being made as to the expense. Do you think that the -Hon. A. C. Harris, before the Northern Indiana Editorial Association, would make statements relative to the cost that were false? Yet he says that It is fair to assume that if this measure is carried in the affirmative it will cause to he paid out of the state treasury not less and probably] more than one million dollars. ‘

It is a new thing to me that our legislators are elected to represent parties. I had thought that while parties elected them They were to serve the whole people. Do you think Will Wood would only scrvfc the republican party if he is elected to congress? If you do you ought to put the people wise. If the object of a new constitution is to obtain state-wide prohibition, why not tell the people that the legislature is clothed with plenary powers and it is up to them to elect men who will represent the people on this question. One other thing I understand to be obtained under the new constitution is the referendum and the recall. I confess I do not understand everything represented in this question, but what I do know leads me to believe’ that if enacted into law it would destroy representative government. If there were nothing else objectionable to be acquired in the new constitution, this pne thing alone ought to cause everyone who believes in representative government to vote “no” on the question.

My motive in this article was not so much to criticise you as to get the question before the people, that they may not be led blindly to do that which they may always regret. I am gl&d this is not a political question and I am proud to be associated with such men as our own Edwin P. Hammond and A. C. Harris, apd I think you could do the people no greater kindness than to print Mr. Harris’ speech in full. Very truly, W. R. NOWELS.