Jasper County Democrat, Volume 15, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 May 1912 — Another Defense of the Registration Law. [ARTICLE]

Another Defense of the Registration Law.

As the registration law is becoming better understood and its ultimate results more closely observed it recalls to mind that trite saying: “No rogue e’er felt the halter draw With good opinion of the law.” Honest men. • decent men. Christian. upright and fair-minded citizen; favor the sanctity of the ballot ard the purity of elections. They advocate the right or every legal voter to hav>- his vpte honestly counted, regardless of the expense, ij' fair.y distributed and economically administered. The thug, the bum and those disreputables who desire to sell their vote oppose the law. The corrupt political grafter who desires to debauch the ballot box for personal gain that he may. as the result of this chicanery dive down deep into the public treasury to buy his fellow men as he would steers, and colonize repeaters in our large cities and herds of foreigners that can neither read, write or speak I a word of our language and are I only taught to vote the ticket that J has the picture of a bird on it, also , oppose the la w. I This lattfer class are raising the I cry of “expense” and “let well 'enough alone.” They raised the same ! howl when the present Australian j ballot system was advocated. j There are occasionally newspapers. happily to the. credit of the profession they are few and far j between, which join in this “let i well enough alone” and “enormous !expense” cry—newspapers whose influence is mere merchandise, whose political principle is located in the money drawer; newspapers of the chameleon species that change their color in compliance with chosen sur- , roundings, which if upon a democratic platform give out the color —the color only—of that party and if sighting an alluring bait shift to and assume another color; newspapers that oppose all reforms because reforms are always in the iiterest of good and against evil. From the beginning of our country's existence to the present day all social and political advancement and reforms have met with resistance from the corrupt, unholy and dishonest beneficiaries. In our nation’s struggle for independence the Tory sympathizers [ and sharers in England’s loot, cried I "Oh. the expense,” and “let . well enough alone.” The advocates and beneficiaries of human slavery in 1861-5 yelled “let us alone, think of the expense.” The republican senators drawing 1 salaries of $7,500 a year and $1,200 | for' some member of their family

as secretary and 20 Cents a mile going to and from their homes, when asked to do justice to the old soldier and give him a paltry dollar-a-day. responded "O; no, no, the pension laws are good enougn as they are, let good enough alone” and so on down to the present day.

All reforms are more or less expensive but are always wortn their cost . and all reforms are opposed by corrupt participants of the spoils wrung from the people through fraud and ballot box debauchery. —Carroll Country Citizen.