Jasper County Democrat, Volume 7, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 August 1904 — THEN AND NOW. [ARTICLE]

THEN AND NOW.

Indianapolis News: It is not difficult to work the deadly parallel on Theo. Roosevelt, or on any other man who talks so freely and frankly—if not carelessly. In his message to Congress last December he said, in discussing the postal frauds: While there may have been as much official corruption in former years, there has been more developed and bronght to light in the immediate past than in the preceding century of our country’s history. While in his speech accepting the nomination he said: Never has the administration of the government been on a cleaner and higher level; never has the public work of the nation been done more honestly and lyBoth these statements can not be true. As a matter of fact, neither of them is true. The corruption recently exposed—and we ' must assume that the President u»*lieves that practically all of it hae been exposed, or he would not havo stopped the investigation —does not compare with that which existed during the Grant administrations. Nor do we believe that it is true to say that we have never in our whole history had a cleaner and honester administration than that whioh President Roosevelt has given ns. In each of these cases the president had a distinct and definite purpose in view, and he was bending every effort to accomplish it. So we have this extravagance of state-

ment. The Boston Herald takes too serious a view when it asks: What logical reason has he to assert that in a period whioh has developed and bronght to light more official corruption than daring the previous century the public work has been done more honestly and efficiently than ever before f He has none at all. He is abasing the dignity of his high offioe, dealing oat sounding ana dubious superlatives, traducing all his predecessors from Washington to Hayes, Cleveland and Harrison, in the manner of an egotistic and irresponsible spellbinder.