Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 November 1889 — HOW THEY REGARD IT. [ARTICLE]

HOW THEY REGARD IT.

THE DEMOCRATIC VICTORIES AS VIEWED IN SEVERAL WAYS. Wiwhiirgton onkeiais Think it l)u« to 1,0-? d« ?d« auseg—Extract- from tlie Pr»«s and Interviews with Prom.nent Mew. DON'T SBE ANY HANDWRITING ON THE WALL. Wf> shingion special. In official circles the result of the election* yesterday is not regarded as nationally important. The issues in every State were local. General Mahone has simply demonstrated that the Bourbons have sufficient hatred for the negro and himself to lead them to the most outrageous suppression of votes, intimidation—and- fraud. XM. .issueforced by the old line-party there was Mahone or anti-Mahone; not a single national question was involved,, and not a man in Virginia who worked for the defeat of the Republican leader Mould listen to any other issue than the personal one. The lesson which the result teaches is national, it is true, involving, as it does, the franchise of the black man; but the battle which brought it about s was fought upon personal and loca-i grounds.

Governor Foraker. his administration, and the question of a third term for a chief magistrate in that State were the issues in Ohio. The tariff, civil-service reform and many other planks of the Republican national platform were not in sight during the heat of the battle, which waged for a month or more. In addition,” especially in Cincinnati, the liquor men threw their business, and their many, and efforts on the side of Democracy, with characteristic arrogance and malignance. The result, in lowa creates piore surprise here than in any other State.- for the reason that the questions before the people there were not fully understood here, and tho further reason that lojvii is regarded as a Republican stronghold that cannot be broken into by the enemy under any conditions or circumstances. The extension of the laws controlling the liquor trafll.: 16 a point beyond the endurance of the majority. aud a Republican candidate for Governor who did not meet the approval of the granger element, conspired to bring about a Democratic victory. To talk of Ohio and lowa being Democratic on the fundamental issues that divide parties is to talk arrant nonsense. In Massachusetts, New York and all States where there were elections held yesterday, local, and especially personal issues controlled the voting. Had everything gone Republican, no attempt would have been made to call it a Republican victory beyond State lines. In ouly one instance has only the most rabid Democrat made an effort to connect the election with President Harrison’s administration. Now that the work is over, some Democrats claim that General- Mahone was the “administration’s candidate.” It is said by them that Mahone was assisted by President Harrison and his friends to secure the nomination and helped bji all possible means in the campaign. To the extent of a hearty indorsement of a good Republican, this is true. President Harrison doubtless indorsed General Mahone’s candidacy in this sense, and hoped for his election. He would have done this had any one of the thousands of good Republicans in ihe Old Dominion been at tho head of the ticket. But it is as absurd, even for the purposes of this clain, to term tho leader of the Virginia Republican campaign • ‘the - administration's candidate,” as it would be to give tbe same title to the candidates in lowa, Massachusetts x>r any of the other States. MR. CLAUKSOn‘B OPINIONS. Interview with Mr. Clarkson. There are many surprises in the Republican defeats, but they come from lo,cal causes in every State except Virginia, and there the results were gained by the usual methods of fraud, suppression and false counting. A Democratic State election board, elected by a Democratic Legislature appoints all tho judges of election, and the law clothes these election judges with polico-court powers, and they order any voter they ploase to jail for tho day, and reign absolute in arbitrary power. The Republicans of Virginia did not have the election of a single, judge of election in tho whole State. With such machinery the Democratic majority might easily have been 100,000 instead of 80,004. The negro is disfranchised. In Virginia the black men gave up their right to hold the offices, and now the Democrats demand that they shall not exercise any choice, even as botweon the ’white men who are to hold the offices. Gen. Mahone and tho Republicans made a vigorous and splendid fight, and had an nonest majority of the voters of tho State with them on tho tariff and Stato debt questions; but nothing can win against a complete and skillful system of fraud. The attempt to eouplo the national administration conspicuously with this defeat is undeserved, as the President simply showed the Bame friendly interest in Mahone that ho did in tho Republican candidates in other States: “Tho causes operating in Ohio and lowa were largely tho same, ovidently, and mainly a reaction against radical temperance and Sunday legislation. The Sunday law and the enforcement of it. changed Hamilten county and its Germans against the Republican party, and Governor Foraker, despite his splendid record and his almost matchless popularity in tho party aiiil the Nation, went down with it. •* "*ln 'lowa the main cause of the

change is due to prohibition. The State has been very close on State issues ever since prohibition was made a law. The Republicans elected their Governor four years ago by only 1,500 plurality, and two years ago by* 6,000 plurality. . -The counties bordering nn the Mississippi river having large cities, such as Duouque, Davenport, anJ' Burlington, all of them with a European or foreign-born population, hold ing a majority of the votes, are intensely anti-prohibition, and- they have voted overwhelmingly against the Republican party because it stood in that State for the law and its enforcement. There was. algo, some Republican dissatisfaction and alienation on account of tho present Governor's extreme views on the railroad question and his irritating enforcement of the railroad laws. - But lowa has been gradually losing its Republican majority foxyears. Over thirty thousand Republicans have left the State, going into the Dakotas, Kansas and the Southwestern country, while the later immigration to the State ha§ been largely Democratic. This year’s results are, in the main, simply increased evidences of the indisposition of a majority of the American people to accept prohibition and too radical legislation on questions that are moral and social rather than political. SECRETARY HALFORD SAYS. Sec’y Halford does not seem to have been at all disturbed by the general Democi-atic success. • -Those who exult over the result of yesterday’s elections,” said he, ‘-have simply proven how easily they forget the political history of the country. At least once -in four • years the people must- vent their feelings, and they generally select an off year when they will not inj ure their party, whether Rep üblioan or Democratic. During a Presidential election there are sins of omission and commission, and when party princi pies are not at stake the voters consult only their own feelings; they go out into the back lot, as it were, and kick themselves for what they have done in the past. The elections are not evidence of additional Democratic strength; on the contrary, the Democratic vote has been cut dowu considerably in many important places notably in New York. The principles aifitfee Republican party were not at stake yesterday.”

AN * ‘INDEPENDENT 11 VIEW. Ibfliannpolis News The general gains of the Democrats undoubtedly indicate an undercurrent unfavorable to the administration,due, in a measure, to political disappointments, but more largely.it may reasonably be believed, to failure to fulfill campaign promises and the enlightenment of the people on questions which have not been clearly and correctly understood. While the tariff was not a conspicuous issue in any of the States, it undoubtedly had force, as an irrepressible question of great political importance, in influencing political sympatbies.The failure of the administration to meet expectations in the enforcement of the civil service law, has also alienated from the Republican party many of those adherents of civil service principles who voted with the party last year. The loss may . not have been large, but it was something. Tho administration has undoubtedly been a disappointment to all who hoped for and expected something more than a change of politicians in the offices. The distribution of spoils and the waste of public money stand out most conspicuously as the distinguishing characteristics of the new administration in its brief reign. It is not a record that the people could bo expected to indorse, and they have not availed themselves of the small opportunity afforded them for giving what if there had been a sweeping Republican victory, would have boon construed as an indorsement. The general result, we believe, indicates that the trend of sentiment is against the kind of politics exemplified in Republican management of public affairs. All this is, of course, the undercurrent of the election. The great change in the vote of Ohio is the result of a combination of causes, among which, asido from those that have been referred to, are disgust of the voters of his own party with the flashy, insincere, and heedlessly ambitious political methods which have characterized the career of Governor Foraker; rovengefulness and mistrust of him by the friends of Sherman, who believed Foraker was disloyal to the Ohio statesman in his cuudidacy forth o Republican nomination for President; and opposition to the third term idea which Foraker’s candidacy represented; while back of this the saloon element quietly threw its influence against the Republicans because a recent spasmodic attempt was made to enforce the saloon law in Cincinnati. d veland Leader. Governor Foraker has been defeated in a good cause - There were certain minor factors of opposition that contributed somewhat to the magnitude of his defeat.'but these .were of slight moment compared with the assaults of the liquor traffic against him. Because of his brave utterances in behalf of Sunday observances, and because he appointed a police board in Cincinnati that fesolutely undertook to enforce the law, a conspiracy of saloon-keepers endeavored to override the liquor in-* terests not only of the State, but of the Nation, and combined to overthrow him. They poured out money by the barrel and whisky ad libitum, and in the vote in the cities in this State alone, where the traffic Is most powerful, more than wiped out Governor Foraker’s great majority of two years ago. .