Jasper County Democrat, Volume 23, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 September 1920 — THE “OLD GUARD” DAYS [ARTICLE]

THE “OLD GUARD” DAYS

Senator Harding has been saying in his front porch speeches that he "wants to get back to normalcy,' and Governor Coolidge professes to wish for a restoration of “old times.” These gentlemen are the candidates of the “Old Guard,” and must, therefore, voice the wishes of the "Old Guard.” . The “normalcy” of “old times” Senator Harding wishes to get back to must be that of the good old, golden Mark Hanna days, when an “Old Guard’s” campaign fund was enormous; when employees at great industrial plants were told by their superintendents, the agents of special Interests, that unless they voted as they (the representatives of special interests) wished them to vote, their jobs would be closed to them on the day following the election; they were the days when corporation taskmasters wrung Immense dividends from the very blood of women and children employed in unregulated “sweatshops.” On the other hand, in the days of "normalcy,” in the “old times,” there was no Federal Reserve system; panics were as frequent as the seasons, and national bank failures occurred on an average of one every three weeks; there was no Farm Loan system; small farmers were the victims of mortgage bank pirates and tenancy was_ the curse of the land; there was no Federal aid in road building, and every farmer paid a “mud tax”; there was no merchant marine; there was none of the many beneficdent legislative enactments of the last two Democratic administions, which wrested the power ot government out of the hands of a few and lodged it in the hands of the people. In those days of “normalcy” an insidious lobby, guided the hand that wrote the laws placed upon the Nation’s statute books, until driven from the corridors of the Capitol as the money-changers of' old were lashed from the Temple. Such was “normalcy” in the “old times" for which the “Old Guard,” the agents of. the special interests, speaking through its candidates, so fervently sighs. —Lafayette Times.