Jasper County Democrat, Volume 10, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 September 1907 — THEY ARE POLITICAL FAKERS, [ARTICLE]

THEY ARE POLITICAL FAKERS,

Governor Hanly has “come out strong” for a SI,OOO liquor license law. But no one heard the governo to that effect last winter when the legislature was considering the question. He was too busy asking for laws creating more offices and bigger salaries.

The department of Commerce and Labor has already begun to get out doctored statistics for the use of the Republicans in the next campaign. Its latest exploit is to put out a lot of juggled figures trying to prove that wages and salaries have increased faster than the cost of living. The man who labors for wages or a salary can work the problem out for himself. The answer that he gets is the answer that counts.

Someone has taken the pains to get up a syndicate article for the Sunday paper “booming Lieutenant Governor Chanler of New York for the Democratic presidential nomination. Mr. Chanler is thirty-eight years old, is a relative of tbe “Astor millions,” and is pretty well known in New York. But New York will not furnish the next Democratic candidate for president. What figure Mr. Chanler will cut in future conventions will depend largely upon himself. It is now proposed that congress shall pass a law whereby men who' have served in the Phillipines in official positions paying “not less than $3,000 a year” may be retired after ten years on a yearly pension equal to one-quarter of their salary to be paid, of course, by the Filippinos whom “divine destiny” threw into our hands. The $3,000 limit would exclude the teachers and other hard-working Americans who have gone to 4he islands, but it is a great scheme —for the $3,000 fellows.

The Indianapolis Republican dailies may be expected to continue their role of advisors to Democrats. It beats the world what an interest the News and Star take in the welfare of the Democratic party. It is a most extraordinary spectacle. There is nothing that these papers desire quite so much as the defeat of the Democratic party at the next election, and yet they are telling it how it should conduct itself, what leaders it should choose, what principles it should adopt, what issues it should make the next campaign on, how it should organize itself, and so on and so on. No such self-sacrific-ing virtue has ever been seen as that exhibited by these Indianapolis Republican papers. It is the political marvel of the age—and it

is also tbe most ridiculous claptrap. No bunco sharp ever quite came up to it.

Many teachers find themselves out of jobs and several thousand children are put to great trouble in reaching school, all because the last legislature, in carrying out tbe Republican centralization policy, passed a law abolishing hundreds of local schools. Tbe neighborhood school —tbe common school —is forced to give way to the larger and moredistant institution. There are to be more frills, more fads and fancies —and incidentally there will be more in it for the school book trust, the supply trust and the “college education” trust.

Mr. Cortelyou was President Roosevelt’s own choice for chairman of the Republican national committee in 1904. Mr. Cortelyou knew that tbe insurance companies, tbe Standard Oil Company tbe railroads and other corporations, as well as Harriman, Rockefeller, Morgan and men of that class, bad given large sums to tbe Roosevelt campaign fund. Tbe money went through Cortelyou’s bands. And yet Mr. Roosevelt said that Judge Parker lied when he charged the Republican committee with receiving tbe money. Mr. Roosevelt further declared that if Judge Parker’s charge was true it covers his administration with infamy. Well, the charge was true, all right, as is now admitted.

Several weeks ago it was given out from a Republican source that Governor Hanly would oppose to the bitter end the nomination of his former friend, Senator Goodwine, for governor. Soon after this came the announcement that exGovernor Durbin was for Goodwine and would manage his candidacy before the Republican state convention. Colonel Durbin evidently has not forgotten how Hanly larruped him for hie management of the state’s finances. In this connection it is significent that Goodwin is charging Hanly’s opposition to him to his refusal to agree to some extravagant appropriations thut the present governor wanted passed last winter. Hanly, Durbin and Goodwine are doubtless right—all three of them. Bad management of the state’s affairs and extravagant appropriations of the public money have been distinguishing features of Republican control in Indiana.

The Democratic members of the last legislature came together at the Grand Hotel, Indianapolis, last week. About fifty out of the sixty men who made up the minority representation in the house and senate were at the meeting. Aside from the social features of the gathering, a good deal of attention was given to the political outlook and the feeling was in marked contrast with that which has existed in previous years. Every man present was not only hopeful of complete Democratic success next year, but sqccess was regarded as certain, the enthusiasm exhibited was remarkable and showed that the old fighting spirtt is again aroused. Wherever Democrats come together these days the same conditions will be not. iced. There will be rivalries and contests in the conventions and primaries that are to precede the election, but these will be friendly and will be marked by a determination to avoid everything that might cause discord. Harmony and victory are going to be the watchword among Democrats in 1908.

President Roosevelt is taking a hand in the local affairs of the city of Cleveland. He has secured the nomination for mayor of his man and Taft’s man,Burton. The whole power of the national administration is to be thrown into the Cleveland contest in order to elect Burton over Tom L. Johnson, the present Democratic mayor.

This interference in a municipal election, where city issues only are at stake, is migbiy small business for tbe president of the United States to be engaged in. But Theodore Roosevelt is noted for that sort of thing. He jumped into tbe Chicago city campaign last spring and urged the election of Busse, tbe notorious rounder, over Mayor Dunne. He knew that Busse was tbe tool of tbe grafting street railroad corporations that the people of Chicago were trying to control. He knows that Mayor Johnson has been engaged in a fight with other grafting street railroad corporations —perhaps owned by tbe same persons who own the Chicago lines —but he is going to take sides with the corporations. A dispatch in a Republican paper says: “The administration expects to win. It recognizes tbe hard fight necessary to defeat Johnson, but understands the moral effect of a Republican victory under tbe circumstances. Administration politics would loom up along with local principles as issue in the elections all through the state. The administration has no doubt of its power if fully exerted. Then, if results accrue according to tbe theories already advanced, the wind would be taken out of the sails of those who express fear of the state going Democratic in tbe presidential year.”

Those persons that think Roosevelt is the “friend of the people” should think again. His interference in local elections outside of his awn state is nothing short of insolence and proves that there are political fakers as well as na-ture-fakers, It also proves that Roosevelt wants all government power to center in Washington and more particularly in himself.