Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 July 1886 — The Coal-Oil Senatorial Boodler. [ARTICLE]

The Coal-Oil Senatorial Boodler.

The protest sent to the Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections by the Republican members of the Ohio delegation in the House is a serious sequel to the refusal of that committee to order an investigation into the charges of bribery against Senator Payne. The action of the committee was the more reprehensible in view of the exceptionally disgraceful and abandoned character of the Democratic party in Ohio, as shown in the late State election. That the Senate could not afford to disregard the presumptive evidence against Payne is sufficiently clear from the popular indignation aroused by its action. The Republican members say in their communication to the committee: “There is a feeling in Ohio that the State has been deeply wronged by your supposed action. The undersigned are convinced that the facts and records, or some of them, laid before your honorable committee by our colleagues, Messrs. Little and Butterworth. have in the press of your other duties failed to receive that consideration and weight which they merit and should have at your hands. We are informed that there is additional testimony in the hands of Mes-rs. Little and Butterworth which they ask an opportunity to present to you. As an indication of the character of the “additional evidence” the letter from those gentlemen to Senator Hoar, Chairman of the committee, is interesting. They claim that in one case of the alleged transfer of a vote from Pendleton to Payne “the question was squarely and seriously addiessed to witness, ‘How much money does he (the Representative) want?’ ” This, together with the other evidence which they state or intimate that they will present and the general popular demand for a reopening of the case, is more than enough to warrant a re-examination by the committee. Indeed, it is not clear how its members can refuse a rehearing upon any other hypothesis than that they take ground that the members of the body to which they belong are above judicial procedure.— Chicago Tribune. Congressman Hepburn, of lowa, did a good thing in exposing the hypocrisy of Cleveland in connection with some items of an appropriation bill. In the bill were items of $19,000 for new furniture for the White House, and SIO,OOO for the White House conservatory. Colonel Hepburn said that this is asking a good deal by a man who vetoed the pension bills of sixty pcor and needy Union soldiers, aggregating less than $7,000, for the alleged reason of economy, and yet asks for $29,000 more to put in the Presidential palace by way of increasing its luxuries. It was a center shot, and exposed Cleveland ven- neatly in his hypocritical course. — lowa Stati Register.