Jasper County Democrat, Volume 7, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 April 1904 — CITY ELECTION NEXT TUESDAY. [ARTICLE]

CITY ELECTION NEXT TUESDAY.

The McCoy bank failure has so overshadowed all other matters in Rensselaer that the coming city election seems to have been almost lost sight of. Yet this election is one of great importance to the people of Rensselaer, affecting not only the city gbvernment for the next two years, but on its result perhaps the good or bad effects will be felt for many years to come. The heavy tax rate and the huge debt that been piled up in years gone by as the result of bad financiering are matters that deeply concern the citizens and taxpayers of Rensselaer.^ A more economical and busi-ness-like administration must be had if we expect our city to prosper. Improvements are nice to have and we must have them, but they should be made so as not to become burdensome on the people, and the city tieasury should be kept in such condition that the man who earns his money by the sweat of his brow can get his pay for his labor without hawking his city orders about the streets, hunting for a buyer, and submitting to big discounts in order to sell at any price to procure bread for his wife and children.

This silly talk of the opposition that we “have the goods to show for our money,” is childish. If a hundred thousand more had been spent we might have had more “goods,” but would it have been wise business policy to spend it, or was it business policy to bankrupt the city simply because we got “goods to show for it?” We have not the time nor the space to go into the details of these transactions, nor of the Makemself sewer matter. It is a condition —and a serious one — that confronts our people. It is a condition brought about by bad management of officials elected by the .republican party of Rensselaer. Conservative republicans will agree with us that there is altogether too much politics in the administration of our local afiairs, and we honestly believe that a better condition of things would result in using a little niore business sense in the electing of local officers and not allowing any one party to have full sway all the time. The democrats have placed a city ticket in the field this year for your consideration, a set of men whom nearly every voter in Rensselaer knows personally and whom he also knows are competent and honorable men, men who will manage the affairs of the city in the same careful and conservative degree that they exercise in conducting their own business. At the head of our ticket stands Mr. George H. Maines, an old soldier and a man who by careful and wise business methods has accumulated a comfortable fortune. Mr. Maines has lived here but a few years, coming here from Illinois. In the latter state he held numerous responsible official positions, and was repeatedly re-elect-ed to office, and always discharged his duties in a manner that evoked praise from even the opposition party. In Joe Jeffries for city clerk we have a young man of the strictest integrity, capable and and obliging, a practical book-keeper and scholar and a gentleman in every sense of the word.

For city treasurer we present Ulysses M. Baughman, of the firm of Baughman & Williams, attorneys. Mr. Baughman is well qualified in every way to fill this office with credit and efficiency. He is a man of considerable property and is a careful and conscientious business man and exercises good judgment in all he does. For city marshal no better man can be found in Rensselaer than John Hordeman. ; John is a young and active man, a hard worker, and would make an ideal marshal in every way. He is a man who knows the duties of city marshal, and would qpnscientiously perform such duties. We do not know when there has been a candidate for this important position who has had so many desirable tributes of Mr. Hordeman. The candidates for councilmen are all good man— J. A. McFarland and Smith Newell in the First Ward; J. J. Eiglesbach and John * Schanlaub in the Second Ward; Bruce White and Moses Tuteur in the Third Ward. In these men we have candidates who have the best interests of the city at heart and who will use their best endeavors to bring it out of of the quagmire of debt in which

it has been plunged, and place the finances in such shape that it can pay one hundred cents on the dollar, and pay it when it has been earned.