Jasper County Democrat, Volume 3, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 May 1900 — Page 4 Advertisements Column 2 [ADVERTISEMENT]

Democratic county convention one week from today. Wharton Barker, nominee of the middle of the readers, called on President McKinley to know whether everything would be all right, and then gave out an interview predicting Bryan’s defeat. No doubt McKinley promised him that he would speak to Mark about that little account and see that it was settled at the first opportunity. The Bepublican anti-trust platform is very simple. First, get an amendment to the Constitution, which will take only a few years and is so easy to get; second, pass ideal laws under this amendment, and, third, get an honest Attorney General to enforce them. It has never occurred to the g. o. p. that if it would get the last, it could dispense with the other two. Cuba seems to be rotten with corruption. It is now officially admitted that the military authorities at Havana Tiave charged up over $342,000 for building a railway six miles long over level ground through public streets, paying no duties on materials and no price for right of way. This is nearly $60,000 & mile. And the War Department excuses it by saying that the United States has been compensated from the islandrevenues. The republicans in Congress are afraid to adopt either of the resolutions offered by democrats in the Senate and House for a Congressional investigation of the Cuban stealings. The total of those stealings, already known, and the number of officials already implicated, makes the republicans fear that an investigation participated in by a few fearless democrats might trace some of the stealings to Washington, and implicate bigger officials than those now known to havelyeen in the conspiracy at the Cuban end of the line.

Government statistics indicate that beer drinking is increasing rapidly throughout the United States. In 1850 the amount of that beverage consumed amounting to one barrel for each sixteen inhabitants but since then the average has increased so steadly that in 1899 it amounted to one-half barrel for each man, woman and child throughout this broad land of boasted morality. The amount drank last year reached the enormous total of 38,581,114 barrels. In forty years the population has incieased 125 per. cent while the .consumption of beer increased 1,800 per. cent. Whiskey drinking is apparently on the decrease for there was more of it manufactured in 1864 than there was in 1899. Ex. The United States supreme court on Monday decided against “Governor” Taylor of Kentucky, and he has abdicated and his guards have dispersed to their homes. Governor Mount provides an asylum for the Goebel murder suspects, and all fled to Indiana as fast as possible. By his action in refusing to deliver up indicted men to Kentucky Gov. Mount has shown himself to be a very smallbore politician and disgraced Indiana far more than any governor she ever had. The decision of the highest court in the land is in keeping with The Democrat’s published opinion at the time this controversy began, that no court could go behind the decision of the Kentucky legislature; that its decision was final.

Unless Mr. McKinley stopped his ears, he heard the enthusiastic cheers given to the Boer envoys and the voices of the Senators and Representatives, who spoke in behalf of the two republics, now engaged in a death grapple with the world’s mightiest empire, to an audience which the largest theatre in Washington would not hold. The Speakers at that reception pointed out the fact that from all over this country there was a demand that this government should save the lives of those little republics, whieh all the world knows could be done by a word from Mr. McKinley to the British government, and yet that word remains unspoken. Instead, the mouthpieces of the administration are saying, “hush! we know that England intends to wipe out those republics. but it is none of our business; vve have promised to remain neutral and we must not say a word.” A President who is afraid of-JEnglpnd, is a novelty in this' country, afid a decidedly unpleasant one, too. But the remedj’ lies in the hands of the people. Next November they can elect a President whose first act will be a dissolution of the partnership between the greatest republic and the worst land-grabbing empire op earth, and if present signs are not misleading, they will do it.