Jasper County Democrat, Volume 4, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 December 1901 — CALL TO DEMOCRATS. [ARTICLE]

CALL TO DEMOCRATS.

The democrats of the Tenth Congressional District will meet in delegate convention in the Jackson Club Rooms in LaFayette, at 11 o’clock a. m., on THURSDAY, JAN. 2, 1902, for the purpose of selecting a member of the Democratic State Central Committee to represent said district for the ensuing two years. The basis of representation, fixed by the State Committee, will be one delegate for each 200, or fraction over 100, of the vote cast for the Hon. John W. Kern for Governor in 1900, which will entitle the several counties in said district to the following number of votes in said convention: Benton, 8; Jasper, 8; Lake, 19; LaPorte, 28; Newton, 6; Porter, 9; Tippecanoe, 23; Warren, 5; White, 12. Total number of votes 118. Necessary to a choice 60 or any fractional vote in excess of 59. The delegates from the several counties shall be selected at the time and in the manner prescribed by the Chairman for each county. Edwin J. Forrest, District Chairman. Call for Meeting of the Democratic Central Committee. The Democratic County Central Committee for Jasper county, is hereby requested to meet at Honan's law office, in Rensselaer. Ind., on MONDAY. DEC. 23, 1901, at one o’clock p. m., for the purpose of naming eight delegates to the District Convention to be held at Lafayette, Ind., on Jan. 2. 1902. A full attendance is desired, as the matter of reorganizing the Central Committee will be considered at that time. Respectfully, N. S. Bates, Chairman C. D. Nowels, Sec.

The democrats of Boston elected Patrick A. Collins for mayor last Tuesday by the largest plurality given a candidate in that city for twenty years, about 18,(XX). The Democrats also secured both branches of the city government. With potatoes ?1 per bushel, beans 4 cents per pound, apples 12 per bushel; eggs 20 cents per dozen and all kinds of meat so dear that only those who have rich relatives can afford to buy it, it would seem that there ought to be a pretty good market for Jusper county’s surplus “ram-rod” hay for food for the laboring men of the country who are working for the same old wages they received when food stuffs were only about one-half as dear as now. We notice that B. J. Gifford is advertising largely in outside county papers under the head, “Farms tor Rent at the Low Rate of One-Third in Jasper County, Indiana”. He also says: “I am offering greater inducements to tenants than any other landlord in either Indiana or Illinois.” And yet the local and supreme courts have decided that under the ironclad, voluminous leases which B. *J. always requires from his “tenants,” the “tenant” is not a tenant at all, but is simply a hired hand who agrees to take a certain per cent of the crop grown by him in payment for his labor; and that ' the relation of landlord and tenant does not exist under the Gifford “lease.”

■ “Berry” Howard, the man who is supposed to have fired the shot that killed Gbv, Goebel of Kentucky, has at last been arrested. Howard fled to the mountains and heavily amed and with an armed guard defied arrest by the authorities, but last Saturday he was taken unprepared and was arrested without a struggle, his “shooting irons” having been temporarilly laid aside. He will now have to stand trial for the murder of Goebel. Howard made the mistake of his life in not fleeing to Indiana with his alleged fellow conspirators, Messrs. Taylor and Finley. Expert accountants, who have been at work on the books in the county offices in Hamilton county for several months, completed the task last week and submitted their report to the board of commisioners. The investigation extended back to 1895. The report shows a shortage of $5,594.03' in the accounts of C. B. Williams, who was clerk from 1895 to 1899, and a shortage of $639 in the accounts of ex-Auditor Calvin Sturdevants. The county will sue to recover this money unless the matter is promptly settled. While there are slight discrepancies in nearly all of the offices no other shortages of any consequence are reported. Hamilton county is one of the republican Gibraltar’s of Indiana.

The Democrat has been asked to lend its aid' in promoting subscriptions to the McKinley National Memorial scheme, which has for its object the erection of a huge monument to the late President at Canton, Ohio. The Democrat is always ready to lend its aid in the furtherance of any movement intended for bettering the conditions of the people of this county, state or nation, or any genuine charitable movement, but it is strongly opposed to the building of expensive and useless monuments or massoleums to the dead, and respectfully declines to further the movement in any way. The fact that the dead president was a republican has nothing whatever to do with our feelings in this matter, and we would be just as much opposed to the erection of a costly massoleum to a democratic president, and would use even stronger language in opposition were this the case. We also oppose the granting of $5,000 per year pension to the widows of presidents, except where they stand in need of a pension to provide the comforts in which they have been reared. No good citizen, no matter what his political preferences are, opposes pensioning deserving persons, but our pension system has reached such tremendous proportions that thinking men of all parties stand appalled at its magnitude. Five hundred thousand dollars a day is about the figure at present, with thousands upon thousands of claims pending which will probably run the amount up to over $200,000,000 per year within five years time. Take the case of Mrs. McKinley, and we find that the late president left an estate valued at about §200,000, while the widow has mining properties in her own right worth several hundred thousand dollars more, and she has no children. Ex-President Harrison left an estate worth several hundred thousand dollars, and his widow doesn’t need a pension. To pay this immense draught on the public treasury, every man who buys a pound of sugar or other necessaries of life must contribute, and it is certainly time to take a common sense view of the matter and go a little slower in th’e pension business. As to the national movement for building a costly monument to the memory of President McKinley, we believe that could his spirit speak, it would oppose the scheme. There are many deserving poor people in our own county who will this winter suffer for the necessaries of life, owing to the extremely high prices of fuel and food products, and every dollar that could be spared toward erecting a collossal massoleum to our murdered president would better be contributed to the aid of the living.