Jasper County Democrat, Volume 9, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 November 1906 — SOMETHING ABOUT HEMENWAY. [ARTICLE]

SOMETHING ABOUT HEMENWAY.

▲ man who Is fit to be a member of the United States senate should be both intelligent and truthful. But there are men in that body who are both Ignorant and mendacious. James A. Hemenway, of this state, is one es these. His public speeches would not be considered as entitled to the least attention if it were not for the fact that by some strange fatality he has crawled up into a seat in the senate of the United States. Mr. Hemenway, in 'the campaign speech that he is delivering, tries to take credit for his party for the passage of the railroad rate bill. Along with the other corporation, senators Hemenway would have voted against any rate bill if he had dared to do so. As it was he voted against every amendment calculated to make the measure better and for amendments that made it weaker. Senator La Follette, of Wisconsin, himself a Republican, read Hemenway’s record in Hemenway’s presence from a public platform in this s<.ate and offered proof of the above facts. And then Mr. Hemenway alludes—he does not dwell on it —to the pure food bill as another Republican performance. When that bill was under consideration in the senate, Hemenway was the special representative of a large group of lobbyists who were trying to cripple it in some of its essential features or defeat it if possible. He was openly charged by leading journals with urging amendments that would have made deception easy, and the Congressional Record of February 20 shows how hard he struggled to befriend the lobby. When he comes to the tariff Mr. Hemenway is even less regardful of the truth of history. Facts with him count for nothing. The point that he tries to make is that a high protective tariff—in other words, high taxes—are responsible for all the prosperity the country has ever known. His exact language is as follows: "This was clearly demonstrated tn 1892, when, for the first time sines 1860, the Democratic party secured complete control of the government and enacted a tariff for revenue only, or a free trade bill, which resulted in closing the factories and turning an army of laborers into an army of tramps, and in bringing upon the country ote of the most disastrous panics we ever have known.” If Mr. Hemenway knows enough and is honest enough to be a United States senator, he knows and will admit that the McKinley high protective tariff law was in force from the first of October, 1890, to the first of September, 1894. What he speaks of as the "free trade bin* was the Wilson bill, a moderate tariff measure. It took effect when the McKinley bill stopped, that is, on August 27, 1894. The panic started in November, 1890, within thirty days after the McKinley law went into force. It grew worse right along during 1891 and 1892. Banks failed, mills shut down, strikes and lockouts occurred, thousands npon thousands were thrown out of work and the slaughter of strikers at Homestead took place. During all this time a Republican president was in the White House, and the McKinley high protective tariff law was In force. Everything that Hemenway speaks about In the paragraph quoted from his speech took place while the same law was in force. Hemenway knows all this to be true, but he has not the courage to admit it The trusts? Well, they work in Indiana all the time just as the bartenders do in the big Republican Columbia club at Indianapolis, which regards a liquor license as something only for the common saloons to bother with. And neither the trusts nor the Columbia club flquor dispensers happen to attract the attention of the governor and attorney-general. But fust let them catch some fellow putting a penny in a slot machine!

A large portion of the speeches of both Governor Hanly and Attorney* General Miller Is given over to telling about the crookedness of several Republican state officials. When they finish telling how the Republican party has thus betrayed the people they then ask everybody to vote to keep this same party In power. This lb courage of the kind called “gall.” It Is also an insult to the intelligence of the voters of Indiana. The Republican state officers, from the governor down, are not parsimonious when it comes to handing the public funds out to party favorites. And it makes no difference that the state is "embarrassed** —Governor Hanly used the word himself—and needs a million dollars or so to be even with the desperate game the Republican politicians have played with it