Jasper County Democrat, Volume 11, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 September 1908 — FORGERY, FRAUD OR FOLLY? [ARTICLE]

FORGERY, FRAUD OR FOLLY?

The Republican enemlee of Mr. Bryan never did Grover Cleveland a greater Injury than that which they have caused by printing an article on the present campaign and its candidates, which they say was written by the now dead ex-president. The authenticity of the article has been denied by some of Mr. Cleveland’s real friends. But whether genuine or not—whether it is a case of forgery, fraud or folly— the publication of the article is of Republican Instigation. In It Mr. Cleveland—if he wrote it — raps the party which made him three times its candidate for president. In it, also, Mr. Cleveland —if he wrote it —indorses Taft and opposes Bryan, though he died before either of them was nominated, before the platforms were made and before the issues were settled. This is all unlike Mr. Cleveland and is in itself evidence of the spurious character of the writing. Besides, for two or three months before he died Mr. Cleveland was a mortally sick man in a hotel at Lakewood, New Jersey. He was so sick that when the hotel was closed at the end of its season he could not be removed, and, attended only by his physicians and nurses, remained for weeks the sole guest in the house. And yet the paper that published the writing states that "Just before his death” Mr. Cleveland planned and wrote the article, and that after his death some unnamed “literary agent” obtained It from his executor, who, it happens, is a Republican. On its face the article is an imitation in some degree of Mr. Cleveland’s style, but is little better than a travesty, and is doubtless a foolish and clumsy forgery. But whether the article is genuine or forged, it will not help the Republicans. Seven members of Cleveland’s cabinet are living. Carlisle and Dickinson are permanently out of politics. The other five, David R. Francis, Richard Olney, Hoke Smith, Judson Harmon and Hillary A. Herbert, are all actively supporting Bryan and Kern.