Jasper County Democrat, Volume 17, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 August 1914 — PROGRESSIVE PARTY COLUMN. [ARTICLE]

PROGRESSIVE PARTY COLUMN.

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This year, Mr. Voter, you vote for I nited States Senator direct. —: o: Progressives this year will be on all the election boards. • —:o: Register, Mr. Voter, so you can vote for a constitutional convention, with the reforms a modern constitution carries. -—:o: James E. Watson says: “I have not changed.” Col. Mulhall has told Mr. Watson’s record. Congressman J. t. McDermott, another Mulhall man, says, “I have not changed. But McDermott has resigned hjs seat in Congress—under fire. After all, the scheme proposed by the Indiana standpat state machine — to oust stadpat nominees from county tickets and substitute “Progressives” on those tickets—is not a new thing. Of course the whole idea is as ridiculous as it is typically a machine scheme, but it is not new The standpats may deny that the plan is being discussed, but the fact remains that already, in the counties, the standpats have proposed precisely the inane and impossible scheme that is credited by the press to the standpat state chairman. In spite of constant pressure and repeated desperate offers of deals and trades in the counties, in spite of this silly attempt to play “compulsory” amalgamation by boss disposal, the Progressives have stanch, solid, respectable, creditable and active county tickets in more than eighty of the ninety-two counties of Indiana. Of course it is perfectly plain that in case the standpats could undermine the progressive movement in the counties those same standpats might gain some slight hope of weakening Albert J. Bev-

eridge in the state. Their scheme for undermining the Progressives already has failed in each and every one of the counties. It did not w'ork at ’retail” and of course it can not be made to work by “wholesale.” —:o; It might be wise for the Indianapolis News—at least while it js trying to show a Democratic-Pro-gressive deal—to withdraw Mr. C. W. Fairbanks, who owns 45 per cent, of th News, from his open alliance with the Ralston-Taggart administration. Mr. Fairbanks is one of Governor Ralston’s appointees, and was named, incidently, on a commission with Thomas I'aggai t and S. B. Fleming. —:o; A v erj confidential” dinner was given the other day at Jim Hemenway’s Indianapolis hotel, to consider the problem of getting some more probationers” to standpatism. The standpat state chairman sent out “confidential” invitations to selected persons. The invitation of course went to progressive citizens, and naturally many progressive voters, regarding i the thing as .a joke, forwarded their confidential invitations to Progressive headquarters. It was asserted in the standpat call for a “very confidential” dinner, that the affair would be in charge of three probationers”, including Jo Batchelor of Marion: J. F. Wild of Indianapolis, representing the Randal-Mor-gan interests, is another. Mr. Wild, in politics, acts for his eastern people in finance. This year Mr. Wild has his orders from the east to play with the standpats and the tractions candidates named by the standpats all over the state. Mr. Wild might be called one of the public utility probationers.