Jasper County Democrat, Volume 14, Number 67, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 November 1911 — LIGHT IS SPREADING [ARTICLE]

LIGHT IS SPREADING

PEOPLE EVIDENTLY CONSIDERING TARIFF QUESTION. Recent Elections Clearly Presage Victory for the Democratic Party, Going Into Battle for the Rights of the People, State elections in the off years often show very different results from the pronouncements of general elections, but this cannot be regarded as an off year for obvious reasons. The tariff is quite as much at issue in the present election as it can be in 1912, for there is a disposition in every manufacturing state to show to the national administration the attitude of the people toward the Payne-Aldrich tariff. Massachusetts and Rhode Island are states commonly recognized as irrevocably wedded to high protection. Senator Lodge Is one of the foremost of the unplucked reactionaries since the passing of Aldrich and Hale, and, as chief representative of the protected Interests of his state, there can be no doubt but he brought every possible influence to bear in the election just held. The attitude of Massachusetts this fall is reasonably assured to afford a forecast as to what its attitude will be in the next general election. It is therefore quite remarkable that Eugene N. Foss should have been elected at all. Such comfort as the standpat element in the federal government can derive from his diminished plurality should not be begrudged, fGr it is but a chilly comfort. It poses the state of Massachusetts in the most hopeful states to be counted in the next national election.

(;• Rhode Island gives an increased Republican majority, which is not to be wondered at, because an overwhelming majority Of the electors are residents of its chief manufacturing city and many thousands are mill operatives from foreign lands, who are subject to the Influence of the men who operate the industries and care very little about politics except as they think it concerns their jobs and their wages. The solemn assurance of the mill owners that any abatement of the tariff will mean a cut in wages and a possible shutdown of the mills will stampede them like sheep into the political fold of their employers. The anti-tariff wave has evidently pot abated.