Jasper County Democrat, Volume 6, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 February 1904 — SLIGHTLY PERSONAL. [ARTICLE]

SLIGHTLY PERSONAL.

The present move of Commissioner Halleck is but a part of the many annoyances The Democrat man has been subjected to since he exposed the peculiar mode of correcting orrors of record under H. B. Murray’s regime while contracts for extras for the new court house were being made right and left by cutting the pages from the record and destroying them —and is one of the penalties one has to pay for being a democrat in Jasper county and exposing the rotten ring who are running things with such a high hand. The methods of Halleck et al, and especially the former, in fighting the editor of this paper for years, and in keeping all county printing from The Democrat that he possibly could and forcing its editor to go into court to get his pay for that which he could not keep from the paper, are too well known to require repetition here. Cuts in honest bills were submitted to rather than go into court, but finally the latter alternative had to be resorted to in self protection. The fact that these cases were taken to other counties, out of the jurisdiction of the corrupt ring, and were tried by unbiased courts and juries, demonstrated that it was not The Democrat man who was at fault, as in every case a judgment for the full amount asked for was given. The petty meanness to which the editor of this paper has been the target by this coterie of bankrupt, judgment-proof politicians is not known to many of The Democrat’s readers, as no mention of much of their damnable, petty spite has been made in these columns. Suffice it to say that it has become so common that but little attention is paid to it any more.

One fact that has been gall and wormwood to the gang of conspiratorp is that despite all the venom and hatred that could be burled at the editor, he has gone right along gaining strength and patronage for his paper, until it has long surpassed all other papers in the county in circulation and in- : fluence, which demonstrates that the great volume of tax-payers do

not endorse these efforts to muscle a paper that gives them tbe only real insight into county affairs that they have ever had. Its Editor has added improvements to the office and paid his bills, and not a solitary judgment against him adorns the judgment dockets of Jasper county—something that at least three of his traducera cannot truthfully say of themselves. The present cases brought by Mr. Halleck are purely “spite cases,” and were a judgment against him considered worth a tinker’s d—a civil action for malicious prosecution would be brought. He can hide behind the state and bring case after case and it costs him nothing but a little labor on his typewriter, while the “dear people” pay the expense of his “having fun with the editor.”