Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 March 1883 — Where De La Matyr’s Skimmer Leaked. [ARTICLE]

Where De La Matyr’s Skimmer Leaked.

Samuel. Jacobs, the radical temperance mayor of Logansport, has just started a new paper, The Temperance Banner. It promises to be a rattler.

He painted a most doleful picture of the condition of the working classes in America to-day; a picture grossly exaggerated in most particulars, and yet to some extent truthful, and likely to be truthful until some wiser teacher than De La Matyr suggests a remedy for the evils which afflict society. He follow’ed up his description of the condition of the working classes, and which he represented as being a few degrees worse than Hades, by saying that the situation of the property holders of the country was vastly worse than that of the laboring people themselves. That is to say: that a man who has property is poorer than a man who has none, and, by a natural conclusion, the richer a man is, the poorer he is. A piece of logic worthy of the man who prophesied a Maelstrom of ruin to follow the resumption of /specie payments. Mr. De La Matyr admitted, truthfully enough, that he knew mighty little about the tariff question, and proceeded to demonstrate not only his ignorance on the subject, but the unreasoning bigotry of his opinions as well, by claiming that that the tariff does not protect American industry, because foreign laborers, in considerable numbers, come across the ocean to avail Jthemselyes of the better wages paid in this country. Whether Mr. De La Matyr would choose to remedy the evil by reducing wages in this country, and thus removing one great inducement to immigration, or whether he would make a law forbidding the immigration of foreigners, he neglected to state. Mr, .De La Matyr told us that the amount of mortgage in-

debtedness on farm property, in. this* state, increased 814,000,000 in one- year; and argued therefrom that the whole rural .population of the state was, rushing headlong towards irrecoverable ruin, and bankruptcy. The idea, never appeared to enter his head that farmers are- much more apt to encumber their property, with debts dhiring. seasons of general, prosperity, than of generaladversity. They run in debt., for fine houses, for barns, for fences and machinery. The young folks get married and buy out the older ones, and give a mortgage on the land to secure the debt they have thus incurred. Mr. De La Matvr referred, especially, to the farmers of Shelby, county, saying that after five- years of excellent crops, and after selling, during the same time, vast quantities of fine walnut lumber, they find themselves worse in debt than at the beginning. * We have the word of the Rev. Peter Hinds,, an old .resident of Shelby county,,as t® the real condition of the farmers there. They are badly in debt, but the cause, is theirown mismanagement., A spirit as fine houses, fine bams, expensive farm machinery:, these are the causes which have brought disaster, to so many citizens of JShelby. county, and not the “class legislation” Mr. De La Matyr talked of ao .glibly. Muehthat the speaker said in regards to. the railroads, will be dteputettby no one, but he- grossly wee estimated the disadvantages & flte gamont system, and ajtoofite advantage.,. *U- article <- > '

The Winamac Republican recently made a slight misuse of the word “precarious” in speaking of a case of brain fever, saying, according to our reccollection, that a certain person was “still precarious with brain fever,” or according to the W. R’s. own statement the quotation should have read “still precarious from brain fever.” In speaking of the matter a couple of weeks ago we said, by way of a harmless joke, rather than of a serious criticism, that the person who used “precarious” in that construction could never have the disease above mentioned. The W. R. man is foolish enough to lose his temper over the matter and calls us by a choice assortment of hard‘names: “Ignoramus,” “galoot,” crank &c., and implies that we intentionally misquoted his language, and argues that “precarilous from” is a correct term. Now so far as the justice of our criticism is concerned it makes no difference whether the Winamac man said “precarious with” or “precious from,” or to please him we will even add “precarious on account of.” We may say that a person is in a precarious condition “with” “or from” a disease or that his health is precarious in the same way; but to say that the person himself is precarious with or from a disease is an expression for which there is no good usage whatever to justify. The W. R. man furthur vents his foolish spite by some altogether untruth-

ful statements in regard to the typographical and mechanical appearance of this paper, but these we pass by with simple contempt. In conclusion of this article we will add a few words by way of preventing any misconception as to the estimation in which we hold the Winamac Republican. The mere fact that, for a very trivial reason, it has forgotten dignity and justice m its treatment of us, does not, by any means, with-hold us from saying that we consider it, on the whole, one of the best country papers that comes to our exchange table; ably edited and well printed, and if it does follow a common practice of printers and occasionally send a damaged or ill printed copy to an exchange it does not thereby follow that all its .copies are damaged ou ill printed.