Jasper County Democrat, Volume 5, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 August 1902 — REPUBLICAN SNEAK THIEVEING. [ARTICLE]

REPUBLICAN SNEAK THIEVEING.

The Indianapolis Sentinel. The efforts of the republican party to steal the democratic tax law are the more disgraceful because the republican party fought that law at every! stage, and did its utmost to deceive the people into believing that it was an injurious measure. They knew that it was passed for the furpose of meeting the state debt, n his speech to the republican convention at Ft. Wayne on June 28, 1892, Chairman Fairbanks admitted it as follows: The present odious tax law is a democratic measure passed to rescue the financial credit of the state. The state was running into debt at the rate of nearly $500,000 per annum. The eastern holders of the bonds demanded their interest when it was due. Current exf >enses had to be met and thedemocratic egislature passed the present tax law as the best expression of its financial wisdom.

That was true, and the law did all that was expected of it. The state quit running behind as soon as it went into effect, and began paying off its debt. But if the republicans had been able to control it would not. It would have been repealed as the laws against vote-buying have been repealed. Senater Fairbanks continued: 1 misinterpet the signs of the times if the people do not repudiate the law and the democratic party at about one and the same time in November next. No law ever rested more unequally upon those who should bear the burden than does this. The people, already heavy laden with unjust taxes, were compelled to submit to additional exactions. Farmers have been compelled to pay on their farms and improvements, and householders on their lots and houses, beyond all reason and right, all of which you should remember is the enforced tribute of the democratic party. There is one way to cure the tax law, and that is to radically revise it. The inequalities can be effectually removed in that way. And it should be so revised that it will effectually relieve the farmersand householders from the present grievous burdens so unjustly imposed. The republican convention was of the same mind, and adopted the following plank: We arraign the democratic party of Indiana for enacting an unequal and unjust tax law. It imposes upon the farmer, laborer and householder an excessive and unjust share of the public burden. It creats a great number of unnecessary offices hitherto unknown to law. To the burden of taxation, already too heavy, it adds more than SIOO,OOO for the fees, salaries and expenses of these offices and officers. We demand its radical revision. We pledge ourselves to enact such amendments to the present tax law as shall relieve the farm and home from the unjust taxation now borne by them; which shall place a just share of the public burden on capital and incorporate property and provide a more simple and less expensive method of assessment. The republican party went to the people and tried to make them believe this rot. And not only this. They formed a conspiracy to deceive the people, andjn every locality where they were ini control they increased the local taxes and tried to make the people believe it was due to the state tax law. In this way they made the people pay over $1,500,(XX) of nn-1 necessary local taxes But their scheming failed. The people ■ were not deceived. They did not repudiate the tux law, and when I the republicans came into power they did not dare to change it. | But now they are trying to steal | the credit for what it has done in i the reduction of the state debt.