Jasper County Democrat, Volume 2, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 July 1899 — Page 4 Advertisements Column 2 [ADVERTISEMENT]

Call for an investigation of county affairs, taxpayers.

When may the taxpayers of Jasper county expect to receive the Auditor’s annual report? It was dne the first of last month.

Won’t the Apologist please tell its readers something about that book and stationery steal from September, 1897, to September, 1898? Also, why Jasper county pays nearly three times as much for books and stationery as Newton, Benton or White, the latter having one-third more population?

The new reform laws do not assume that all township trustees and county officers are thieves, as many of the boodle newspapers would have people believe, although some of them are. The statue making the loaning of public money, with or without interest, by any county, city, township or state custodian of public funds, embezzlement, a species of theft, and the least penalty that can be inflicted two years in the penitentiary with a heavy fine and disfranchisement, has been on the statute books for years. Does it proceed upon the theory that all custodians of public funds are thieves? The statute making extortion taking more fees than the laws allow a felony has been on the statute books for years. Does it proceed upon the tueory that all officers are thieves? Everybody, but those interested in robbing the people, knows better.

Based on the rate charged others, Jasper county pays an outrageous sum for water for the court house, and the county council should see to it that this expense is cut down nearly onehalf. With the city furnishing water for all the Monon locomotives and giving them ten incandescent lights for $350 per year, furnishing the editor of the Apologist with several office and house faucets, yard sprinkling privilege and street, sprinkling privilege of 50 feet on two streets, and last but by no means least, water for running his motor, which furnishes power for running his presses, at only $36 per year on a ten year contract, it is an outrage upon the taxpayers of the county to be compelled to pay $350 per year for what little water is used by the county. The Monon will use more than a hundred times as much water as is used by the county, while the Apologist uses at least twenty times more than the county. The padded legal gentlemen of the Apologist, it will be remembered, stated at the time the waterworks were put in that an “advantageous contract” could no doubt be made for furnishing the county with water, and it would seem that such has been the case —very advantageous to Rensselaer, but mighty tough on the outside taxpayers of the county. The Democrat believes with every right minded citizen that a fair price should be paid for this water, but it does not believe that an outrageously extravagant price should be paid, and $350 is $l5O more than a very liberal price.

The Republican party lias no call to indulge in windy declamations against trusts. They have their evil with their good, but are an impregnable part of business necessity, and they are no more to be puffed out by platforms and legislatures than are promissory note partnerships. The Democratic party, sputtering against wealth, naturally sputters against trusts. Let it. The Republican party does not hold that property is a crime, or that the highly organized forms of modern business are to.be disturbed at the request of the same set of persons that is frantic for a cheap dollar. —New Ycrk Sun. The democratic party does not decry wealth, it does decry the abuse of wealth by these cormorants called “trusts.” “They have their evil,” but no good comes out of them unless limiting productions, controlling supply, raising prices—not for the purpose of securing reasonable profits but to plunder the purchasing public—crushing out the small merchants, discharging employes, entailing ruin in their remorseless path, can be called good. Of course the reJublican party believes in trusts. t is the father of them, its policies created them, and their bloodmoney keeps it in power, supplies its corruption fund, with which it debauched and deluded the electorate in 1888, and again in 1896, and a strong effort is being made to consumate the same crime in 1900. None but the trusts them-r selves and their paid accessories, before and after the fact, are in favor of these grinding, soulless, cormorants, these destroyers of the middle and poorer classes. In gratitude for past favors and from natural inclination the republicans will stand by them as a matter of course. “The ox knoweCh his owner and the ass his master’s 'crib.”