Jasper County Democrat, Volume 5, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 April 1902 — THANK YOU. [ARTICLE]

THANK YOU.

Editor Democrat lt is with pleasure that I beg to extend my congratulations at the beginning of the fifth year of your publication of The Jasper County Democrat. I trust that this year and next, and those succeeding, will witness a continuation of that success which has marked the passage of the four years just completed. We have in this county a large majority of republicans, and your subscription list is, no doubt, thickly dotted with’ names of men who differ from you in politics. Honest men always take kindly to an honestly conducted enterprise, however the opinions of the two may differ on any subject, and I doubt if you will find anyone, even among those wh&m you most bitterly denounced through the columns of The Democrat, who will venture to say that any of your journalistic efforts have been made through aught else but honest opinion and investigation. I believe there are but few dishonest men in Jasper county, comparatively, speaking, it being a community of farmers, among whom the standard of “honesty seems higher than in most -other callings, yet the fact that we have some among us that will bear watching, cannot be denied, and the taxpayers of the county owe you more than you will ever receive from them, for your services in exposing the acts of certain public officials who are the sworn servants of the people. There is a work in every community, Mr. Editor, for such a paper as yours. Public office has come to be a thing of barter and trade, a kind of abbreviated road to wealth, by which men sacrifice everything honorable to their mad craze for money. The people of every community should be thankful if they possess a paper that has their interests at heart, and it is to be hoped that in time public opinion will be so moulded by papers like yours that public offices will be filled by honorable men, and not by men that make a business of betraying the people whom they represent. * # *