Jasper County Democrat, Volume 3, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 October 1900 — A Plain Talk To the Plain People. [ARTICLE]

A Plain Talk To the Plain People.

The Democrat, in the closing days of this campaign, desires to have a plain, heart to heart talk with the plain people of Jasper county. By the word “plain,” we mean the business man, the farmer, the mechanic, the laborer —the men who produce the wealth and pay the expenses of our local goverment—and not the professional politician and tax-eater. We speak of local government in particular because that is closest the people. The township and county government costs you more money directly than does the national government, and therefore you should at least be as deeply interested in the selection of your local candidates as you are in the selection of those to the highest office in the land. In the two and one-half years that the writer has had the honor of presiding over the destinies of The Democrat this paper has at all times been an honest and fearless exponent of the cause of the people—and, please God, so long as we are permitted to remain on this sphere and conduct a newspaper, it shall continue to battle for the cause of the masses. More than two years ago, The Democrat, single-handed and alone, begun the fight for lower taxes and a more economical county and township government. It pointed out abuses right and left; showed how the people’s money was being squandered and absorbed by the tax-eating class; made comparisons with other counties and proved beyond contradiction that our county government in many instances was costing more than almost any county in Indiana, even though the population and amount of business necessarily transacted was but one-fourth to one-tenth that of most other counties. For exposing these methods of parting the people from their money we were persecuted by the tax-eaters, arrested time and again without reasonable cause except that we were interferiug in long-estab-lished customs in Jasper county the custom of fleecing the public. While one wing of the tax-eaters was hatching up new schemes to “down” The Democrat, another wing was sedately telling the people that everything was lovely and the goose hanging high; Jasper county’s tax levy was down to the lowest possible notch, and couldn’t be reduced a solitary penny; all The Democrat’s statements about mismanagement of county affairs were lies; The Democrat editor was the biggest liar that ever came from Remington; the $4,000 loan was all right; the stationery and other steals were perfectly legitimate; the wolf scalp bounty had to be maintained or the wolves would gobble up all the chickens in the Rensselaer chick-en-coops; there were no steals in the court house contracts; the Keener township gravel road—like the war in the Philippines was about done, the money being honestly expended, and the Lord only knows what else. It is a fact that every charge of extravagance or mismanagement was denied by the court house ring. Now, what was true of all this? Time has proven nearly every statement of The Democrat’s to have been true in every particular and an investigation of the county records will show that the rest of its statements were also true. The county council gave the lie to the misrepresentations regarding county expenses, by reducing the tax levy 20 cents on each SIOO valuation without injury to any branch of county government. Everything has jogged along without missing a cog, and while some of the old-time tax-eaters have had to seek other vocations and the wolf growing business has not been quite as profitable as of old—sso has been paid for wolf scalps in the last year, against about S4OO for the previous year—and we have hoard of no great calamity befalling the people in general by reason of this reduction in taxes. The numerous lawsuits instituted against the county, by Heinzman Bros., W. B. Burford, Nelson Morris and others, have proved to everyone that the rottenness in Denmark as shown by The Democrat was not overdrawn, and a petition signed by almost 1000 of the county’s heaviest taxpayers, irrespective of political faiths, was presented to the commissioners asking for a complete non-partisan investigation of the county records. That petition was given the cold shoulder because the officials dared not make the investigation. They dare not make it now or at nny future time. Two of the members of that board of commissioners who turned a deaf ear to this big list of prominent petitioners are to-day asking for re-election to office. Their election moans that no rascality will be uncovered in the public offices of Jasper county if they can prevent it. Their elections means that

the Keener township gravel road rascality will forever remain a sealed book to the taxpapers not only of that township but to the whole county as well. Their election means absolute defiance of tho law wherever it is to their interests to do so. Their election means more gravel road scandals and an extravagance only curbed by the generosity of the county council. Their election, and that of a council in sympathy with them, means a return to the old tax levy of 50 to 60 cents for county purposes, and the refattening of the horde of tax-eaters at the public crib. Their election means a continuation of ring rule and a catering to tho Giflord’s and their ilk and against the average business man, farmer or mechanic. Do you want this to go on, Mr. Taxpayer? These are pertinent questions and we implore you for your own welfare and that of your neighbor to consider them carefully before casting your ballot Novembere 6.