Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 April 1887 — LABOR SAINS AND DEMOCRATIC LOSSES. [ARTICLE]

LABOR SAINS AND DEMOCRATIC LOSSES.

The Wonderful Growth of the Foriner j»t the Expense of the Latter Since IMS4. The labor vote in the three great cities. New York, Chicago, and Cincinnati, in 1884, was 1 per cent, of the total vote cast. Last fell in New York, and this spring in Chicago and Cincinnati, this vote was onethird of the whole. The Democratic vote in these three cities in 1884 was large enough to make New York Democratic, to render Ohio doubtful, and to reduce the Republican majority in Illinois to the lowest figures in a Presidential year in the historp of the party. The vote cast for Mayor Hewitt in New York City was too small ever to carry the State for the Democrats in a Presidential year, and this was equally true of the vote polled by Judgo Peckbam. the Democratic candidate for Court of Ap r peals. In Chicago this spring the Democratic vote disappeared entirely, and in Cincinnati it dropped to half its average total. The Republican vote in these cities at these elections fell not far below the average of an off year. We need draw no inferences for the future from these facts. We need simply state them. We are very far from confusing and confounding the socialist poll in Chicago with’ the honest labor protest against bad government in Cincinnati, or either with the vote for Henry George, compounded of many and diverse elements, part socialist, part Labor, and part the political flotsam of a great city. The Republican vote in Chicago, like the Democratic vote in New York for Mayor Hewitt, represented the united protest of men from both parties against the threats of socialism—with this difference, that in Chicago the Democratic vote disappeared and in New York the Republican vote made a strong fight on its own account and polled its fair proportion of its aggregate vote in 1884. But with these qualifications and limitations the following table (in which Hamilton County does duty for Cincinnati in 1884) tells its own remarkable story of the enormous growth of the Labor vote at the expense of the Democratic party: 1886-7. 18W! Bep. Dem. Lab. ltep. Dem. Lab. N. Y... 60.433 90,552 68,110 90,095 133,222 3,499 Cm.... 17,963 11,851 17,367 38,744 33,248 318 Chi;... 51.210 23,179 51,420 48,530 812 ■ 129,693 192,403 103,656 J 80.259 215,000 4,629 Making all allowances for fusion in Chicago, where a straight-out Democratic ticket would probably have polled 15,006 votes or so, it still remains true that the Labor vote has, grown twentyfold, and the Democratic vote has been cat in two in the middle. With the Democratic vote of these three cities at even 150,000, the North is Republican. With the city populations of the country casting a Labor vote this size, or half this size, there is not a single Northern State whose Electoral vote would be counted for a Democratic candidate. As we said before, these are notinferences, they are facts —facts of the first political magnitude. We have no desire to blink the fact that in all city elections this spiing, and in one State election, local and special causes played their share in changing the relative vote of the different parties. The Rhode Island election itself is proof how straight a blow can be hit at bad methods in politics when the eyes of voters are open. Cleveland, where a bad Republican city ticket was buried because forty-three per cent, of the Republican voters stayed away from the polls, and Republican business men voted for the Democratic candidate for Mayor, offers more proof of the same order. But neither of these instances changes the broad fact that the Labor vote has grown to amazing proportions in three years nt the expense of the Democratic party. The one great Republican city of the country—Philadelphia—is the only one in which no Labor vote was cast. In Milwaukee, where a fusion ticket was run by the Democrats and Republicans against a Labor candidate he pulled through only by the narrowest vote of his opponent, Whose heaviest veto was for the most part polled in the Democratic wards of the city. As it was, the city was carried by the Labor vote, and the election .was turned into a defeat for socia ism only by the outlying towns. With the exception of two or three Republican wards in Milwaukee and Dubuque, which was carried this week by the Knights of Labor, there is nowhere in the country a Republican city vote which has added to the Labor poll. The Labor vote comes from the Democratic party, and in its going it has taken half or all the voting strength of this party in the great cities of the country, and without these cities the Democratic party North is weak indeed. —Philadelphia Press.