People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 November 1893 — Our Dan Again. [ARTICLE]

Our Dan Again.

The Washington (D. C.) Evening News says that Dan Voorhees will take up the cause of the pensioners early in the regular session of congress. He expects to make a speech on the pension policy of the administration, in which we will defend the old soldiers. The speech which he is now’ preparing to deliver on the pension question will be a rebuke of Secretauy Hoke Smith’s pension policy. We have no doubt that the old soldiers over the country who have had their names stricken off the pension rolls and also those who have for many years, been trying to secure pensions will be pleased to know’ that our Dan has undertaken the task of championing the rights of these old veterans toward the speedy passage and recommendation of pension bills. Dan knows just how to strike the popular chord. He has been there before, and it matters not what question comes up his constituents know not upon which side their champion will appear. We doubt if there is a veteran in the country that has the war record of Dan Voorhees. It is not a hard thing to do, to just merely call up the days in the Sixties. At that time, the Knight of the Golden Circle had no better friend than Dan Voorhees, and to-day he turns np as the friend of the soldier. There is where your India rubber brain comes in play. Let us see, didn't Dan make a speech once upon a time, w’hen he said every soldier snould wear a collar, upon which should be branded these words “A Lincoln, His Dog”. Isn’t this peculiary interesting to our Democratic ex-soldier? We should think it w’ould be. Still after him calling them “Lincoln dogs,” “Lincoln hirelings” and other outrageous and blasphemous names, they who so nobly fought tor the preservation of this good land of ours, will vote for and endorse the policy of the present Democratic administration. We cannot see how in the name of good, common sense they can ever follow the teachings of Dan Voorhees. He is certainly a man with a record, but w’ho would care to shoulder it? That's right, Dan, go ahead, you nave some private object in view or you would never undertake what you are now trying to do.

The Indianapolis Journal says: “The average American citizen does not like a sneak. Hoke Smith is managing the pension department from a sneak basis, and is not making friends for himself or his administration by so doing. Even those who believe that the pension list needs revising do not approve of underhand methods or of the refusal to give the pensioner a chance to prove anew the justice of his claim before his little stipend is taken from him.” At the blowout Saturday night a little five year old philosopher was heard to say: “Pa when everybody gets to be Republicans and all the people vote our ticket will we have bonfires, blowing horns and big shooting?” Well, no. son; yes, really we do not want everybody Republicans even if our party is right, we want somebody against us, we want another party to abuse and lay our own meanness to.

There is no more harm for half the common Democrats to vote with the Republicans on on election day than for half of the Democratic U. S. senators and representatives to vote with them in congress in support of measures the Democratic party has denounced for twenty years. It is the other fellow that is now saying “Old Cleveland did it.” With whom did the slums of the cities vote last Tuesday.