Jasper County Democrat, Volume 10, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 March 1908 — BEGINNING TO SEE, [ARTICLE]

BEGINNING TO SEE,

Because the Democratic editors of the state favored an early state Convention and went on record for a local option law, the Indianapolis News accuses them of being controlled by the ‘"brewers and saoon keepers.” There are some unnv heads on the News.

Two years ago Governor Hanly was handing C. W. Miller, then attorney general, great verbal boquets But now Miller’s friends say that Hanly’s appointees are Watson’s “managers and wirepullers.” Prof. Hugh Th. Miller ias been accused of having the governor’s backing, but it begins to look as if he is the victim of a confidence game. The gubernatorial nomination persimmon is lardly worth knocking, but at the present writing it seems that Watson is reaching for it with the longest pole. Billee Taylor is the only one of the four candidates who is running in the middle of the road and the longest way round.

After epending nearly a week in securing a jury in the Bruuaugb paving graft case at Indianapolis, it was found necessary to dismiss the jury because of a report that an effort had been made to tamper with it. A former sheriff told the judge of the criminal court that he had been approached with the proposition that “it would be worth $5,000 to Brunaugh to have someone on that jury who would vote against conviction.” As Brunaugh is not understood to have anything like that much money, it looks as if there were others “higher up” who are taking a personal interest iu, the graft disclosures. When the lid is fully lifted in Indiauapolis and Marion county there will doubtless be a heavy emigration to parte s«fe if not unknown.

presidency unless it came to him as a unanimous, free-will offering.” What will he say now that Governor Johnson has bounded into the arena with such an influential body of backers behind hjm dianapolis Star (Rep.) Mr. Bryan never said anything of the sort, “in substance” or otherwise, and the Indianapolis Star knows it. All he has said is that if the Democrats nominate him as their candidate he will be glad to serve them. He has said nothing about a 'unanimous” nomination, although that is what he will get, iu the end, even if some “favorite son” is given a complimentary vote by bis state.

Marion county, with its 8,000 negro Republican votes, has been “reliably” Republican for many years —so reliably, in fact, that the politicians who have controlled Republican nominations felt that they were safe to do they pleased. In 1896 the county went over 6,000 against Bryan. It was about the same in 1900. In 1904 it was carried by Roosevelt and Hanly by approximately 10,000 plurality. In 1906 the Republican state ticket had about 5,000 plurality, but on the county ticket a Democratic auditor and prosecuting attorney were elected. Evidently the people had begun to suspect that there was something wrong locally and they climbed over the party wall to find out. And they have found out. The court bouse reeks with graft and thievery. Untold thousands of dollars have been stolen and unnumbered official crooks and their accomplices are headed for the penitentiary.

The Republican gubernatorial contest is settling down to a war of the factions. The two candidates who have loomed biggest in the public eye since the beginning of the scrap are Congressman James E. Watson and C. W. Miller, former attorney general. Watson has the backing of the Fairbanks-Hemenway-Goo d ri cb machine, and C. W. Miller is being boomed for all he is worth (at least) by the Beveridge elan. The Indianapolis Star and News, being Fairbank’s organs, have turned a cold shoulder to C. W. Miller. But Senator Beveridge is not without resources. He is a friend and wellwisher of one William HL Taft, presidential candidate and opponent of Fairbanks. Taft has a brother Charley, who owns the Cincinnati Times-Star. And the Times-Star, supposedly at Beveridge’s suggestion, has opened its columns to C. W. Miller’s press bureau, which proceeds to larrup the Indianapolis Star, Watson and the whole machine outfit, charging them with “notorious unfairness,” “desperate misrepresentation,” and other things. All this leads the Fairbanks people to wonder whether the Beveridge men on the national delegation will jump to Taft on the first ballot or the second if C. W. Miller is defeated in the state convention.

The Portland Oregonian is a Republican paper that is beginning to see things clearly. As to the tariff it says: "The genuine effect of the tariff upon wages is beautifully shown by the present state of things in this country. We have Dingleyism in full bloom and at the same time every city from the Atlantic to the Pacific is filled with men clambring for work to keep them from starvation and for the most part clamoring vainly.” As to the general tendency of the plutocratic policies of the Republican party, thy same paper says: >q "Wbat becomes of the wealth we are all working to produce and lof which Mr. Morgan and his aristocratic friends ire robbing us? Some of it goes to produce our Thaws with their Evelyns and their retinues of insanity experts. Some of it provides means for our Stanford Whites to fit up their chambers of mirrors and procure women victims -for their orgies. Some of it furnishes forth monkey dinners and bridge whist parties. One fraction keeps Wall street going, and through Wall street

flows finally into Ihe banks of the Morgan and Standard Oil. Another fraction of what is produced in America by those workmen whom the plutocrats have determined to harry into submission goes to purchase titled husbands for our “American queens.” Gladys Vanderbilt could afford to pay 15,000,000 for her bedraggled remnant of European aristocracy. Some pay more, some pay less, but all titles come dear. This, then, is what we are coming to in the United States if the plutocrats carry out their plans. We are to become a nation of degraded industrial serfs forever slaving at the starvation point under the iron law of wages, while our superiors and rulers riot in sensual luxury on the products of labor,”