Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 April 1890 — The Tariff and the Farmer. [ARTICLE]

The Tariff and the Farmer.

Our good friendsythecandidates for the nominations for couuty offices on the Republican ticket, are requested to take notice, that the official call for the convention will be issued next week and that the announcements of all who have so authorized, will appear at the same time. Those who are thinking of seeking a nomination and desire to start right up with the front of the procession, will do well to remember this fact, and send in their names accordingly. The Democratic Sentinel, after making the false and utterly preposterous statement that the action of the Jasper County Board of Education, last fall, in regard to the Indiana School Book Cornpauyjjs books, has caused the loss of thousands of dollars to the school patrons of the county, also states that said action, such as it was, was on the pait of the Repub-! lican trustees of the couuty. The facts of the case are that the Board simply decided not to force the books into the schools, against the wishes of the patrons, until the questions of the constitutional and J scope of the law were fully settled and determined; but that the books should be ordered and kept by the i Trustees and sold to everyone desiring and their use permitted in •the schools, by all who wished to use them. In this eminently wise and conservative decision, the Trustees were a unit. Not a single man, Democrat or Republican, j but what was in f avor of it. Furthermore, it is a fact apparent to! anyone who wishes to investigate the matter, that the Democratic Trustees of the county have made no more effort than the Republicans to encourage the introduction of the books into the schools of their respective townships, Take Jackson Freeland, for instance, the rock-rooted Democratic Trustee of Newton township. There is probably no Trustee in the county that has sold a less number of the books, thau he has. Have the people noticed recently the numerous telegrams announcing defalcations, especially among the office officials ? Do not let anybody suppose that these are appointees of President Harrison. ~ They are every one appointees of President Cleveland. A" recent special dispatch from Washington concerning this subject, has this to say; “That the voters of the United States acted wisely in retiring the late Democratic adinistration is becoming dimly more and more apparlack of integrity in Democratic of"ncial circles are now commg to light. Since the 4th of last March the Republicans have been in possession of the books of the department of the interior, and tin- Domocratef who have been keening tlie accounts for four years are now out of office. Among the first discoveries made was e vidence of afchoi'tage in the accounts of various receivers of local land offices in the

West. These shortages are.so universal and so extensive as to lead to the belief that the Democrat in offiice is very unreliable. About thirty of these Democratic receivers havo gone wrong, and suit will be brought against each oneof them to recover the moneys unaccounted for. All of these officers are bonded, and when they fail to settle the accounts found short, their bondsmen will be sued. Five of these officials have Been removed from office since the discovery of the shortages, and a number were changed during the summer and fall before the discovery was made. The few receivers of this sort still in office will be removed at once.”

A queer howl is going on among the free traders, intended to attract the farmer. Every evil in society, in the commercial or busi- 1 ness world, is traeeable to the tariff Every year has its business failures, but most of them are in the mercantile or manufacturing lines, and of all the thousands and hundreds of thousands of them, there is scarcely a farmer among and if there is one, it will be fouud that he added some speculative enterprise to the legitimate work of farming. The New Albany (Ind.) Tribune treats this subject in inimical style. The Tribune says: “Just now the great political wail of the time is the woe-begone, poverty stricken condition of the crushed and debtridden farmer. What insufferable nonsense it all is! The whole of it is nothing but the toot-horns of demagogues. It is the noise of free trade roust-a-bouts trying to make the people whose average condition is better and safer than any others, believe that they are just on the borders of starvation, and when they have developed a a copious flow of crocodile tears bewailing the misfortunes of the ‘poor and oppressed farmers,’ they burst forth in mighty chorus, ‘lt is all on account of the tariff’ The grasshoppers, in swarms that darken the sun, sweep over the western plains and the grain fields of the faimer where they alight, disappear. In that locality the farmer is hard pushed, for the results of his labor are gone. But — it is the robber tariff that has despoiled him. A prolonged drouth comes upon a section of country, and the farmer’s fields are blasted. And the howling dervishes of the day wail in unison. ‘lts the robber tariff that brought the calamity.’ A mighty flood of water comes down upon the rich bottom lands along a river, and the farmer is s tri ppod eftbe products of ur year. He feels poor, of course he does, and the free trade mountebanks beseige him with their hired mourning and vociferously declare that it is all on account of the tariff When cattle have murrain it is the tariff When sheep have the rot, it is the tariff. When hogs sicken and die it is the tariff. When winter freezes or weevil shrivels the wheat it is the tariff’. When curculio blasts the plums, when peach trees die and frosts nip all the tender fruit buds, it is the tariff. It would be a fortunate thing for the country if frosts would freeze, drouth wither, grasshoppers bite, and floods wash out to a shoreless sea all these mischievous prophets of evil, that their voices, might no more be heard in the laud, and that peace and prosperity "might reign undisturbed.”