Jasper County Democrat, Volume 3, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 May 1900 — M’KINLEY IS GLOOMY. [ARTICLE]

M’KINLEY IS GLOOMY.

THE STAY-AT-HOME VOTE FORECASTS CERTAIN DEFEAT. Evidence That Republican Disgust and Consequent Apathy Will This Fail Reduce the 1896 McKinley Vote a Good Round Million. Washington correspondence: The administration is feeling very globmy over recent reports regarding State conventions in the North. In New England the reports indicate that only the machine could be induced to turn out at the primaries. This produced the usual harmonious conventions in which the administration was overwhelmingly Indorsed; but the rank and file of the party staid away from the polls to such an extent that in many towns there were-hardly enough Republicans to make the formal organization of the primaries. This apathy and indifference on the part of the great body of the Republicans of the North carries its lesson to every one who knows the first principle of politics. The stay-at-home Republican Vote Is sure this fall to cut down McKinley’s enormous vote of 1896 not less than a good round million, and forecasts his Inevitable and overwhelming defeat. For Instance the primaries which elected delegates to the Republican convention in the State of New Hampshire, taking the State as a whole, did not amount to 5,000 votes. The result-. Ing convention chose as a delegate to the Philadelphia convention Frank Jones, of Portsmouth. Frank Jones was once a Democrat. He now controls the Boston and Maine Railroad system, which has done more than any other agency to debauch politics in New Hampshire, and he of all men is now to be a Republican in good standing and a candidate for tho seat in the United States Senate occupied by Wm. E. Chandler.

In marked contrast is tho Democratic State convention in New Hampshire. It was the largest and most enthusiastic held in the State in many years. The platform adopted was everything that the Democracy could ask for. The Chicago platform was reaffirmed, and planks were adopted denouncing Imperialism, militarism and the trusts. The old Granite State threatens to swing from its Republican moorings and become, as it was for more than half a century, the Gibraltar of New England Democracy. What is true of conditions in New Hampshire, is true all through the North. Careful reports from every industry of New England discloses the fact that not one of them claims to-day to be prosperous. The shoe manufacturers in particular report that their season is shorter than at any time in former years, that their market is already congested with goods, and that though the leather trust has forced up tho prices of their raw material they are unable <0 maintain the prices on their products from lack of demand for their goods. Everybody wears shoes. If everybody has his shoes half-soled Instead of buying a new pair It cuts down the consumption of shoes onethird in the United States. That is what is the matter with the shoe industry. The masses are not prosperous and the shoe industry is the surest barometer.

Two States have been heard from since the passage of the Porto Rican bill. The town elections of Indiana indicate that the Democrats will carry the State in November by the largest majority in twenty years. All through the gas and industrial belt towns and sities hitherto reliably Republican have gone Democratic for the first time. Democratic towns and cities have increased their majorities, and wherever tho Republicans liave won it has been by largely reduced pluralities. Anderson, the home of the Republican candidate for Governor,. went Democratic for the first time after a bitter struggle in which the Republicans exhausted their energies in attempting to bring to the polls a mass of voters who refused to come. In Minnesota the city of t St. Paul went heavily Democratic for the first time in eight years, electing the full ticket from top to bottom by large raaporltles. McKinley carried Ramsey □ounty, in which St. Paul is located, by »ver 5,000 maporlty. Hennepin County, which gave McKinley over 6,000 majority, voted two years ago a majority of over 5,000 for Governor Lind, the fusion candidate. Thus the two principal cities of Minnesota are now in the Democratic line, representing a change »f over 17,000 votes against what McKinley received in 1890. The same coalitions prevail throughout the State, which may be counted as a surety In the Democratic column In November. The reports from Michigan are no less encouraging. The trend of affairs |» distinctly toward the Democratic party. The unanimous nomination of Bryan Is assured. Not a delegate has »o far been chosen in opposition. Bryan will hold his strength in the country districts, and will gain in the industrial renters nnd large cities. The various ksues on which the Republicans will l e forced to make their campaign are the ones which have brought about the ipathy In the Republican ranks, which will insure McKinley's defeat. The gold Democrats, so-called, are getting into line with the party In every section of tl e country. Democratic enthusiasm Is increasing every week, while the Republicans exhibit every sign of panic. The leaders are quarreling among themselves, nnd Mark Hanna’s efforts to raise a duplicate of the enormous Corruption fund which he bad in 1896 are not meeting with success. An interesting example of the way the trusts work in partnership with

the Republican part}’ has just come to light, and from a Republican source. It will be reniembered that the steel plate trust, formed by an alliance formed between the Carnegie and Bethlehem plants, has for two years claimed that they could not make steel plates by the Krupp process for less than $545 a ton, and that they had to pay $45 in royalty for the process, which was secret. Congress has hitherto passed an act refusing to pay over S3OO a ton for this armor plate, but the Secretary of the Navy has been urging upon Shis Congress to pay the trust their price. Now comes a report from Consul General Guenther, through the State Departments In which he gives interesting figures and facts relative to the Krupp process in Germany. He declares that it Is no secret, and that every well-informed steel manufacturer is familiar with It. He also declares that were the German Government to throw open the steel plate contracts to all competitors on equal terms steel plates would be furnished at onehalf Krupp’s prices. These same rival concerns have already forced Krupp to lower his prices on guns over 50 per cent. The argument in favor of the Government constructing its own battleships, armor plate and guns thus receives additional strength. While it usually costs more to build under Government control than In private plants, the Increased cost is due almost entirely to the fact that eight hours constitutes a day’s labor under the Government, while private concerns exact ten. In regard to guns and armor plate it is now known that the Government can cut largely under contract prices. The Condition of Labor. - There is no denying the fact that labor is not In as satisfactory a condition as the exponents of prosperity would have us believe. It does not respond to the McKinley prosperity and the full tin pails of the perambulating speechmaking President are limited to metaphor and to the comic Republican press. If so prosperous, why these strikes, boycotts, lockouts, etc? Perhaps there Is prosperity, and labor is endeavoring to obtain a small portion of it but at this present writing there are no indications that It Is receiving what it should receive and what it is entitled to receive according to the predictions of Mr. McKinley and the benevolent trusts. There never was a time when, and there never was a nation that has increased in its industrial achievements to such a gigantic extent as have the United States. Such an increase should have attached to it the element of prosperity as a necessary adjunct. But labor is not rising up to the level of this wonderful prosperity, and its unrest is caused by its struggle to break through the restraining erust. But this means resistance to labor. It Is deprivation of the good things attendant upon the startling era of tiade expansion, and when we seek for the obstacle in the way of labor, the stacle which it is striving to surmount by the only means in its power, to wit, strikes and boycotts, we find it in the trusts and combines and also in capital In the of ex-Spcaker Reed—that is to say. capital which is not money, but expansive credit commonly known as “shares of stock.” It is figured by the New York Journal, and it is a fact, that the capital stock of the combines now drawing a percentage thereon out of the people amounts to ten thousand million dollars. This is capital, and it Is the capital which Is arrayed against labor. We know that it is not money, for our circulating medium does not amount to one-fifth of that capitalization, but we do know that that capitalization is turned into Income-producing wealth, drawing to Itself the total amount of our circulating medium as its profit, and this added to the other multiplications of our circulating medium, or our actual money, compels one dollar of actual money to perforin the work of three hundred and thirty dollars of credit money. No labor In the world and no combination of labor can successfully fight against this burden. The only remedy is to return to the people the power to create money which they have been deprived of and to destroy the criminal aggressors upon their finances. Imperial Extravagance. There is certainly enough conclusive evidence to demonstrate that the United States treasury is being depleted to keep up the extravagant expenses of an official style proper only to an impartial regime. In his report upon the Bacon resolutions demanding information concerning government expenditures in Cuba, Secretary Root seems inclined to throw the blame upon exSecretary Alger—that Is to say, Secretary Alger having inaugurated the system of making enormous allowances of money to officials in Cuba for mere purposes of official dignity, continues in his footsteps and winks at the violation of law Involved. It is a little curious that such an idea could have found lodgment in the brain of an American cltisen, whether in a private or official capacity. Though there should be no independent action on the part of a President of the United States for which ho could not be held responsible, yet such has been and is the continual conduct of Mr. McKinley and all the members of his cabinet since the Spanish war. Our occupation of Cuba is not an American occupation. It is the personal occupation of the commander-in-chief of the army of the United States. True, be is the President of the United States, but in his disbursement of fabulous fees and in sanctioning the expenditure of enormous sums of money to his own official appointees in Cuba, ho is not acting as President of the United States, nor as an official at all, but as a commander-ln-cblef who has no superior, not even Congress. If Gens. Brooke and Ludlow were allowed thou-

sands of dollars beyond 1 their official salaries; if Col. Bliss; the of customs, received a special allowance; If Director of the Post Rathbone received an additional allowance, and others received large sums of money for house rent horses, carriages and for luxurious paraphernalia, the people of the United States liave a right to know whether they or the Cubans pay this money. If It comes out of the Cubans, It is simply robbery, and If out of the treasury of the United States, it Is absolutely unwarranted by law for the very reasons specified by the imperialists themselves, that they are not there as the United States. Anti-Trust Bosh. Has the time arrived when all of the people can be fooled all the time? The great party of trusts seems to think so, for it is making preparations to deceive them by hypocritical assurances of anxiety for the public welfare owing to Its own creatures the trusts? The Washington Times puts the matter In the following clear and expressive fashion: Are the American people such fools as that they cannot see the Impudence of anti-trust ’ utterances frpm the mouths of men who are owned and op- • erated by the trusts; who owe their public positions to trust Influence and money, and who dare not speak or vote In either house ot Congress save as the trusts dictate? If, indeed, the voters of the country have fallen to a plane of political intelligence and virtue so low that they are open to delusion by these demagogic and corrupt creatures of the trusts they will richly deserve what they will get by it. Throughout the present session of Congress the issue between the trusts and their legislative tools on one side and the representatives of honest popular opposition to grinding monopoly and corrupt privilege on the other has been continually In evidence and defined on strictly political Hues. The Porto Rican infamy was accomplished by the majority under coercion from the executive branch of the government. With half a dozen exceptions, in this as in other trust legislation, the Republican Senators and Representatives have obeyed the orders of their crust control, while the Democrats in Congress have battled for public decencj and respect for our institutions. Every effort by the minority to reduce the power for mischief of favored monopolies has been defeated. Every job of treasury raiding has been promoted by the majority. The administration lias beeu supported In its questionable relations with the Standard Oil bank. The flagrant subsidy bill, which would take ninety million dollars out of the pockets of taxpayers and make the sum a free gift to the transportation trust magnates Is being pressed by all the well-known means and methods of the Republican machine, and stands in an excellent chance of being jammed through before adjournment. The American Nicaragua canal scheme is being resisted by the administration in the interest of its enemies, the transcontinental railway plutocratic proprietary. The history of Republican legislative action since the Spanish war is an unbroken record of service to the trusts and monopolies and nothing whatever else.

The Desecrated Fltig. There is a society in these United States, styling it.-elf “American Flag Association,” and it is afflicted with spasms at the repeated desecrations of the flag which the association is incorporated to preserve it against. “Twenty-two years have passed,” it says reproachfully, “since the first effort was made in Congress ’to obtain legislation to protect the United States flag from desecration. Flag bills are now lying in the pigeon holes of the Judiciary Committee rooms under the dust of neglect. In tho Tacon Theater, in Havana, It Is hissed, and elsewhere spat upon, and it Is abused in Torto Rico, Cuba, Honolulu and Manila.” Of course it is, and it may be also said that it is most Infamously abused in Sulu. Moreover, the Turks, Chinese ami other foreigners are not stuck on it. This society of good people do not seem to be aware that none of the places mentioned are subject to the Constitution of the United States, and according to Mr. Oxnard and the trust managers of the Republican party it has no business there against their Interests. If the flag adorers would begin a crusade against the desecrations, saliva and contumely heaped upon tire American flag l>y the McKinley administration and haul it out of the mud, where it tins been trampled by the Republican party, they might restore some veneration for the flag of our country. A Bad Memory. That was an uncommon lapse of memory in Col. J. W. Gates, of American Steel and Wire publicity. He juggled Wall street out of $1,000,000 the other day, deposited it in bank, and forgot all about it until the. cashier called his attention to It. It is by this constant disregard of trifles that the trust magnates have the advantages of the men who have their dally bread eves before their eyes. We Don’t Need • Vice Preeideat. It Is absurd to worry about the second place on the Republican national ticket. Under the rule of the trusts a President without I ackbone is all that is necessary to successfully govern the country. By qnd by all of our executive offices will be filled by a committee of trust magnates. Sole Cuefbdlan of Prosperity. It Is safe to say that the McKinley administration *nd the trusts are the guardian* and custodians of prosper Ity. There Is no controversy about that, the grievance being that they guard It so carefully that none of It ev*r gets beyond thslr controL * t \