Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 October 1890 — IT IS A PARTY FOR THE WEST. [ARTICLE]

IT IS A PARTY FOR THE WEST.

The insidious cry that the RepubliI can party in any way favors Eastern against Western interests should be stamped out at once. For it is peculiarly the party .of the West. The West gave to it its life; the West will continue to give it its life. In turn it has practically made the West. What is called the Northwest is the creation of the Republican party. It was the favorable land laws enacted by the Republican party that opened the great West to the Settlement of poor men. It was the fostering law and policy of the Republican party that protected the settlers, encouraged the building of railroads, and made-the West as pleasant as a hoise and as profitable as a place of business as the East. It gave to the millions of free Americans now on their homes the homestead law which secured them such homes. Before that it resisted and defeated the desperate attempt of the Democratic party to extend the blight of slavery over the West. Of its own courage it kept slavery out of Nebraska and Kansas, and at the same time out.of all the Territories to the west of them, which have since become States. The Republican party has admitted Into the Union all of the States west of the Missouri River. If there had been Democratic instead of Republican rule, not one in five of them would have been admitted. Indeed, the West, and particularly the Northwest, or the whole country west of Chicago, is peculiarly the child of the Republican party. It is the creation, so far as it has been divided into States, of the Republican party, tits millions of happy homes and farms were made possible through the homestead and other land laws enacted by tho Republican party. The West never bad a backset until in the Democratic administration of Cleveland, when every homesteader was held by Cleveland and Sparks to he a thief, and every land grant company a conspiracy against the Government. Three hundred thousand patents of homesteads were held up by that administration, The present Republican administration has been busily distributing these patents, as directed by law and justice. In all legislation the Republican party is mindful of the interests of the great West. It is the home of its own strength, tho home of its own courage, the foundation of all its success, past, present and future. Tho Republican party could not be unjust to the West without its being unjust to itself; for in a large sense the West is the Republican party. In all the legislation of the present Congress the interests of the West have been especially cared for. The sinister attempt of the Democratic party to alienate the West from the Republican party will fail. The people of the West, are too intelligent. They know that their prosperity and their protection alike, ever since their States were founded, have come from the Republican party.

J. S. CLARKSON.