Jasper County Democrat, Volume 7, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 November 1904 — WHAT DID, IT. [ARTICLE]

WHAT DID, IT.

Charley Landia and Crumpacker both want to be United States senator. The man who boasts that he never scratches a ticket has no license to growl about high taxes. The cheeks of some of Jasper county’s republican taxpayers, who hßve obeyed the biblical injunction of turning the other cheek, must by this time resemble a piece of sole-leather, for they have certainly been given a great many slaps. Uncle John Alexander Dowie ordered his flock at Zion City 111., to vote for Roosevelt, and as a result several thousand votes were cast for ‘‘the man on horseback” and only seventeen for Parker. Now we expect Bro. Marshall to take bsck all the harsh things he has been saying for years of that old fraud “Elijah II” Grant, the home township of Chas. Spinney, democratic treas-urer-elect of Newton county, went f7O republican on the national ticket, but gave Spinney a plurality of 284. Compare this splendid endorsement with that of the IV home township of Jasper’s republican treasurer, which gave a republican plurality of 40 on the national ticket arid a democratic plurality of 215 on county treasurer. It is rumored that the new national administration will shake up the dry bones in the postoffices of the country ; that it will decide that eight years is long enough for a patriot to read the postal cards and draw the salary of postmaster; and that the hungry horde of republiedns patriots who have had no pie must be given a jilace at the counter. This will be direful news to the present incumbents, if true.

Benton oouuty paper* are practically a unit in declaring that the defeat of the republican ticket in that county was caused by the feeling against the court house ring that had grown up iu that county and the tax-ferret imposition. As here, the tax-ferrets were employed to investigate the taxpayers, but an investigation of the ring that was spending the money was not attempted nor thought of by the powers that be. Enough republicans resented this to overthrow a republican plurality of 628 and elect all the democratic candidates for county office but treasuer by pluralities ranging from 65 to 220. The democrats also elected seven of the eleven township trustees of the county. We are glad to see that enough Benton county, republicans can forget partisanship for a moment to give a severe rebuke to the ring that has been robbing them and to the methods used. No doubt the lesson will not soon be forgotten by the politicians of that county. While hundreds of republicans in Jasper county have in the three last local campaigns, tried to do likewise, for which they are to be greatly commended, their forces are as yet insufficient to over-ride the big republican majority on the ring’s side. May their ranks increase until Jasper county officials all learn the lesson that they are public servants, and must ad conduct tbe affairs of the county as to merit tbe respect of their contsituents, or Be oat of a job.

Probably the principal reaaon why Indiana gave a republican plurality of over 92,000 in the late election was because of the reprehensible methods used at the state convention to make Indiana solid for Parker. Such methods are all right for'republican round-ers-up, for the average republican will submit to being spat upon, stamped under foot, disfranchised and gagged, and still come up smiling and vote ’er straight when election time comes. But with democrats it’s altogether different, and were it not so they would not be democrats, who love liberty and fair play and detest bossism. We have no doubt but the words pf wisdom at the state convention of some of the old whefcl-horses of the party, are now being recalled to mind by the renegade democrats who held the whip hand at that notoriously unfair and undemocaatic convention. The democrats of Indiana can well spare the leadership of these distinguished gentlemen, and those former party leaders who listened to the syren voice of the Wall Street-Cleveland crowd, as conveyed to them through the smooth-tongued Taggarts, committed political suicide. Parker was, we believe, a good, conservative man and would have made an excellent president, much preferable to the impulsive Roosevelt, but the democracy of the country had no confidence in the men who were pushing him forward. It would indeed seem that thousands of demoerrts in Indiana did refuse —as The Democrat stated at the time they would do —to be led by the nose by the would-be politicians of the above stripe. It does not pay to sacrifice democratic principles for a few Wall Street electoral votes, which it has been demonstrated the magnates can not deliver. The old adage about leading a horße to water, etc., has proven true in the case of the Indiana democracy, and the experiment has cost the democrats two congressmen from this state. It will not pay to repeat it again.