Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 September 1892 — Mr. Mills Hits the Gang Again. [ARTICLE]

Mr. Mills Hits the Gang Again.

An intelligent and prosperous farmer of Carpenter township was talking with some calamity party people, not long ago, and he challenged them to name a single farmer in Jasper County, who, for the last twenty years, had followed his vocation intelligently and industriously, and engaged in no outside speculations, who was not in good enough circumstances financially but that he could live without working any longer, if he wished to do so. He further challenged them to name a Jasper county merchant of whom the same could be truthfully said. The challenges were neither of them accepted. •‘Oh well, just so we can get them to belivvc it uh til after election.” The above was the brazen ami shameless reply made by one of the Pilot's gang when expostulated with by a citizen for their course in publish! ug their outrageous and slanderous lies in regard to our county officials and local taxation. Not one man of all this slanderous Pilot gang has the courage to try to defend their villainous course in the face of the direct questions of intelligent citizens. Like the guerrillas of war times, to whom they Lm aptly compared, and with whom and whose methods some of them were in sympathy, they try to assassinate the characters of better men from behind the safe ambusn of anonymity. Out upon such skulking, dastardly, villainous methods! The midnight assassin of character is as great a villain at heart of the midnight assassin of life, only usually a greater coward and dastard.

The republican meeting last Saturday was a mighty thin affair. It looki-. . nviigh private Cheadle was holding a private discussion. A large number of people were in town, as usual on Saturdays, but the Republican meeting was not, n~ yer rs past, the drawing card.—Private Cheadle offered an excuse for the empty seats, and The Republican adopts and reiterates it -Democratic SentineL Now it befall that at the very hour when onr esteemed and veracious contemporary was printing the paper rivm which the above paragraph is quoted, that a democratic met ding was in progress in the court house. A meeting addressed b» .he leading democratic orator of northwest Indiana, Hon. T. J. Wood, of Crown Point, and

also by a gentleman from Indianapolis, T. J. Hudson, by name. Much longer notice had been given of the coming of these speakers than in Mr. Cheadle’s cage.— also had the benefit of advertising

in two depux-ratic papers, the Sentinel and the Pilot. In their ease the statement that the town was fall of people, as usual on Saturdays, is true, as it is not'true in regard to the. Saturday previous when Mr. Cheadle was here. With all these things in the Democratic speakers’ favor, the utmost extent of their audience, at any one time, was not niore ages and sexes included, and to the truth of this statement, several good men would make affidavit, if necessary. And of this audience At least one’third wereEepublicans; while of Mr. Cheadle’s hearers not over hart a dozen at the outside were Democrats or Peoples Party men. If Mr. Cheadle’s meeting, with 100 voters in his audience, not to speak of those not voters, was “a mighty thin ‘ affair,” as Neighbor McEwen says, how will he describe-the extemely diaphaneous character of last Saturday’s “gathering of the faithful?”

Editor Republican:—ln the Pilot of Sept 9, 1892, we find the following: “Now here Mr. Intelligent and Efficient” figure out the fraud “place the responsibility where it belongs.” Well, here, it is. The records of Jasper county show, that every dollar that the people have paid into the Treasury, has been expended as required by law, and every cent has been accounted for; that there is no fraud in county affairs.

There is only diminutive little delusiun, that found its origin in the overtaxed and distracted brains of the Pilot's “Farmer editorial staff.” The same who labor at “physical toil from fourteen to sixteen hours per day,” and who, encroach upon God’s and nature’s laws, as well as the social laws that are recognized by society and oui statute books,|by employing the unseemly hours of midnight darkness, that should be devoted to “natures sweet restorer” balmy sleep, “and Sunday,” a day of divine inspiration and needed rest, to conjure up uncanny schemes, to wreck the reputations o!|men, more honest and law abiding than are themselves.

Again the Pilot says; “Somebody is responsible for our large, uncalled for, unreasonable loca tax increase.” “This increase” i; quotes” is more than $16,000. “No reasonable excuse for this has ever been offered.” In the first place the increase as quoted does not exist. In the second place there is no necessity, either iu fancy or fact for any excuse. The levies as made for the county, by the County Commissioners, and the taxes collected in pursuance thereof, are no greater than are actually needed by the county for the economical administration of her affairs, and for the necessary improvements that have been so badly needed these many years, and which, now that the county is out of debt, she is able to make. There was not a dollar collected for “Campaign purposes.”

There has not been a dollar fraudulently expended. There is not a cent that is not accounted for, nor is there a surplus in the Treasury over approximated requirements. The whole matter is simply “sop thrown out to catch votes,” in the interest of a set of individuals who want office, and who have not even the ability to come to the records and investigate the alleged frauds, at least one would suppose that this is the case, after reading the following; “Mr. Mills and the ring organ make it a point to invite the people to make an investigation of the records, knowing full well that farmers and the people generally have but a limited knowledge of book-keeping and but little time toMspare out-side their ordinary work for such purposes.” It would indeed be a sad misfortune should the voters of Jasper county he mis-lead by this gang of corruption, who, from managing editor to lowliest scribe, occupy that den of political vice, known as the Pilot office.

C. E. MILLS.