Jasper County Democrat, Volume 10, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 June 1907 — SOME SMASHED MACHINES. [ARTICLE]

SOME SMASHED MACHINES.

Indianapolis News: Recently a staff correspondent of The Nfws told of the political conditions in Wabash countyshowing that this great Republican county at the election of 1906 was almost turned over to the Democrats because of Republican methods and machine rule. The Wabash Plain Dealer, the organ of the Wabash county machine, devotes several colums to explaining how our correspondent was wrong. Indeed according to the Plain Dealer, there is no Republican machine in Wabash county, which certainly will be news not only to the State at large, but most of all to the people of Wabash county, who fondly believed that they knew a machine whep they saw it. The fact that the Republican majority in that county dropped from about 2,000 to almost nothing (in fact, one Democrat was elected on the county ticket) was caused by—well, real* ly we do not know what! But we desire to call attention to the following statements made by the Plain Dealer concerning other counties near Wabash, some of them in the same congressional district:

Grant county, which in all these years has been running up Republican majorities of from 2,000 to 4,000, in 1906 cut these majorities to zero and elected half the Democratic nominees. In Kosciusko county the Republican majority for the last forty years has ranged from 1,000 to 2,000. In 1906 not only was the Republican majority for the county ticket wiped out, but every candidate on the Republican county ticket, except the man for representative, was beaten, and he was elected only by a majority of thir-ty-five.

Again the county of Huntington, which since 1896 has been Republican by from 600 to 1,200, went Democratic last November, only two or three of the Republican nominees pulling through. Once more: Howard connty has been for a generation reliably Republican, bnt in 1906 the county elected the Republican local ticket by only 300 or 400, against normal Republican majorities of from 1,500 to 2,500.

Exactly. The Plain Dealer sustains the News correspondent. The Republican ring in Grant county has been notorious for years, and the taxpayers revolted. So, too, in Kosciusko county. There three or four men would meet in a back room and make the connty nominations and force them on the people. For years there was a demand in that county that the books be investigated—that ring fule cease—that the machine be smashed. In 1906 the machine was smashed by the Republicans themselves—and an “overdraft” was found in the county treasurer’s office as soon as the books could be opened! It was found that for years a system had been followed of diverting money from the proper funds—"the money was thrown into a tub, as it were, and then ladled out as it was needed,” was the way the county officer explained the system to our correspondent. In the management of county affairs little attention was paid to law. Hnntington county was in the same shape. The demand was insistent that the books be opened. A county commissioner was indicted (he has since been acquitted), gang rule prevailed in Huntington county, and the people revolted. Muck

the same condition existed in Howard county. “Smash the local machine and open the books, so we can find out where our money is going,” was the campaign cry. The Republicans did In other counties of the State the Democrats smashed their machines. Though the Plain Dealer may not know what has happened, or how it happened, other ReputL licans of Wabash county have nd dpubt that the Republicans smashed the machine in that county. There is ample warning in all of these manifestations of independence that corrupt politicians and machine politicians will do well to heed. 1