Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 July 1889 — THE NEW SCHOOL-BOOK LAW. [ARTICLE]

THE NEW SCHOOL-BOOK LAW.

This country now pays more than 600 million dollars every year for the products of foreign labor, which ought to be paid to the labor of our own country. If, according to the logic of free traders, this 600 millions were to be multiplied about ten times, everything would be lovely. “What fools these mortals be.” Slugger Sullivan refuses to accept the challenge of Jaexson, the Australian colored pugilist, because he can’t condescend to fight with a “nigger. 1 ’ All the same there is no doubt but that Jackson is a good deal more of a gentlemen in deportment and a good deal less of a drunken brute, than is the great and proud heavy-weight from Beautown-

The demagogue Democratic papers which are laboring so hard in the attempt to catch the votes of unthinking people by parading all the strikes, labor troubles and business failures of present time as the result of four months of Republican administration, should take notice of the remark of the Springfield, Mass.*, Republican, a Cleveland organ that “strikes are no more the result of Republican success than the strikes of 1886 were of Democratic success.” Seven Southern States, Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, Florida and South Caro - bna cast 856,082 votes, all told, at the last election and they have 59 members of Congress and 59 vote s in the Electoral College; or one member aud one electoral vote to every 14,509 votes cast The state of New York cast 1,331,680 votes and has 36 members of Congress and 36 Electoral votes, or pjne for every 36,991 of its voting population. Thus fourteen noble Southern gentlemen have more power in the government than thirty-six northern mudsills—and such is the kingdom of Democracy.

Great Scott! Who would have thought that within so few years after the New York *papers had been engaged in their long-drawn and piteous appeals to the people of the country for means to build the pedestal for Bartholdi’s great statue oE Liberty which the people of New York were themselves were too paraiminous to give and after their tremendous bloviating over the statue after its erection, that these same papers should now be condemning the colossus in the most unmeasured terms and wishing it was in Chicago—or a worse place? Yet such is the fact The Graphic, for instance, after mentioning that the Sun had been directing some of it “double-distil-led rancor at the monstrosity,’* itself proceeds to speak of the statue as a “grotesque travesty of the grandiose,” a “hide eus and hateful thing” and a figure “which is 4o genuine art what a sugar stat-

uetteis to Parian maible or galvanized iron to stone coping.” Such language, following so soon after the excessive and universal laudations of the statue three of four years ago, is enough to take one’s breath away. A remarkable defense of Alexander Sullivan, the Cronin suspect, was lately issued by Patrick Ford in his papgr, the Irish World. This was followed by a still more remarkable answer in the Chicago Infer Ocean over the signature of “Pat Laborer.” This answer is not only a scathing and crushing answer to Ford’s arguments but is a wonderful piece of literary work, as well. If the author of the letter is really a railroad laborer, he is the most remarkable one living. Th e Infer-Ocean declares, editorially, that it does not know whether the signature “Pat Grant” is fictitious or genuine. We are willing to hazard the guess, however, that if the real identity of the writer was known it would prove to be the same person who wrote the celebrated “Siva” letters, a few years ago. And as to the identity of “Siva” The Republican is willing to hazard another guess and will mention a name which, to our knowledge, lias never before been connected with the “Siva” mattpr. only man in Ameriea, in our judgement, who combines in himself the wonderful and peculiar literary abilities with the unequalled grasp of the whole political situation shown in the “Siva” letters, is Judge Albion W. Tourgee, the author of “A Fool’s Errand.” '

Here is a little paragraph clipped from a neighboring democratic exchange: People who are now engaged ir. canning fruit can extract much comfort for themselves in reflecting that while their sugar comes very high the profits of the sugar trust for the first five, months of 1889 was 88,230,000. The sugar trust is about the most oppressive and odious of the whole list of trusts and at the same time it is the only trust of any magnitude which at all justifies the constantly re-iterated assertion of the free traders that trusts are supported by the protective tariff. The tariff on sugar is a great benefit to the sugar trust, and for this reason, that sugar is not a product themanufacture of which can be materially extended and increased by a protective tariff. Its production in this country is confined to so small an area that the amount produced is only a very small proportion of the amount consumed in the country. Thus it is that sugar is about the only article of extensive consumption iu this country upon which the protective tariff has failed of its purpose and has proved a burden and a detriment to the people, instead. And yet, with characteristic dishonesty and demagoguery this same tariff on sugar is the one of all others which the Democrats refused to reduce and, indeed, actually proposed to make higher. To keep the Democratic party solid in the state of Louisiana, they perpetuated a tax which, by their own admission, takes millions of dollars every year out of the pockets of the laboring people of the country, to enrich the members of a conscienceless band of robbers called a sugar trust.

Man proposes and God disposes. The present school-book law was intended to defeat the Governor’s recommendation and thfl. popular demand for free text-books and to create a monopoly in that article, which, under the pretense of benefiting the people a little, should benefit a few individuals much more. The law does precisely that, and yet it paves the way for free school-books and makes result inevitable. Long before the five years’ term of the present contract shall have expired there will be a universal protest from the teachers of Indiana against the vicious system now being inaugurated, and the demand of the people will be free school-books and no monopolies. Thus the very

legislation which wah intended to forestall and prevent a beneficial reform will insure its ultimate accomplishment Some of the evils of the new system are patent, while others are concealed. Time and experience will develop the nature and extent of its injurious influence in the. j schools. In Minnesota, where so much trouble has been experienced with a similar law, the cities and large towns are exempt from its operation. Here they will all be subjected to the same, cast-iron uniformityLaiid the same impracticable provisions. The monopoly will embrace every city and town in the state, and all will be graded down to the uniform l&vel of inferior text-books. The first injury will be to the schools. The next will be to the people, in making them pay tribute to a legalized monopoly which, under the pretense of furnishing cheaper school books, will add enormously to the per diem salaries of county super- j intendents and township trustees, j If the monopoly succeeds in get- j ting its books into the hands of the people at all* it will* be at a large increase in county and township expenses. Thus the people will soon discover that while they are saving at the spile, they are losing at the bung, and, in order to support a monopoly, are actually j being made to foot the bills for : the prostitution of their own schools. It will end in a demand for free school books and no monopolies,—lndianapolis Journal,