Jasper Republican, Volume 1, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 October 1874 — The Election and the Finance Question. [ARTICLE]

The Election and the Finance Question.

The recent election in this State and Ohio has given rise to a wide discussion, principally on the part of Eastern journals, as to whether the result was hard money victory, a verdict in favor of expansion or specie payments. As usual the judgment of those papers discussing the matter is affected by their convictions, or preferences, those which are opposed to expansion and in favor of an early return to specie payment, clearly seeing a hard money victory in the Republican defeat and those who advocate opposite views as easily reaching an opposite conclusion. So far as this State is concerned, both sides are mistaken. The case may be different in Ohio, but a general view of the canvass and of the exciting causes of the Demociatic victory, together with a somewhat careful compilation of intelligent opinion justify us in saying that in this State the question of expansion or contraction, of hard money or paper money, of repudiation or specie payment, had very little to do with the election. Indeed it would be safe to say that of all the cause* which have been named as accounting for the result, the money question was the least operative and exerted the least influence. Though each parly inserted a financial plank in its platform, neither was united on the question, or gave any prominence during tho campaign to its platform utterance* on the finances. The Repuhli.an party declared in favor of free national banking andandditional currency; the Democracy in favor of the repeal of the national banking law and the payment of the five-twenty bonds in greenbacks. The former were defeated and the latter victorious, yet it would be preposterous to say that a majority of the people of this State are in favor of repealing the national banking act, or of repudiating the government faith. The fact is, the platform utterances of the two parties were about equally ambiguous. Neither intended to make the financial question an issue in the campaign, and the leaders of neither gave it first prominence, nor did the people. It had some influence along with other causes in giving direction to public sentiment and in shap. ing the result, but it was not first, nor second, nor third in importance. The campaign was not conducted on that line, the election did not turn on that issue, and the result is in no sense an expression of the people on that question. The only shape in which the financial question entered into the canvass as a potential element, was in so far as the panic of last year and Us sequences were concerned. It is the disposition of the common mind to hold the party in power responsible for every evil of the times, from hog cholera to foreign wars, from deranged finances to the grasshopper plague. A lot of unthinking voters doubtless held the Republican party responsible for the financial panic of last fall, and for the hard times and scarcity of money which have followed. But this was done without any particular process of reasoning, and without any reference to the platform utterances or probable future action of either party. It was simply an instinctive and not very intelligent desi>e to punish somebody for the hard times which everybody feels, but which nobody acknowledges the responsibility for, or exactly knows the cause of so little part did the question of contraction or expansion play in the campaiga that probably not one in a thousand voters in the State could tell today whether he intended to vote, or did vote, for or against one or the other. The discussion of the Eastern papers is therefore inconseqaectial and absurd. They mi ht almost as well discuss whether the election showed the position of the people of Indiana in regard to Mormonism, free-love, or the Tilton-Beechcr controversy, for either of these three questions had nearly as much to do with the result as the distinctive issue of hard money vs. paper money.— Indianapolis Journal.