Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 February 1893 — “JUST A LITTLE MORE ABOUT IT.” [ARTICLE]

“JUST A LITTLE MORE ABOUT IT.”

The Chicago Inter Ocean which led the fight against the gamblers of Garfield Park and caused their withdrawal from Chicago and their location in Indiana, has now editorally declared that the Hawthorne and Roby race tracks are simply gambling institutions and that it will no longer print their advertismpnts nor chronicle their doings in its news columns. The Inter Ocean is in a much better position to know what the true character of these so-called racing institutions is than any of the papers 4 in this state which are so ready to become their apologists.

A goood many of the bills introduced in the present Democrat-' ic Legislature, are evidently simply for the purpose of threatening some important interests, iu order that a big lobby may be brought to the capital to oppose the bills, and “see”Jhe members. The several circuit court gerrymander bills that have been introduced are of this nature, and having done their work, and got together a large and “influential” lobby, to oppose them, nothing more will be heard of them. There is probably something of this kind behind the bill to tax building and loan associations out of existence.

Uncle George Major of the Remington Press, says “it is wrong to tax the whole community for a little dirty work d >ne by a party organ.” But we don’t .mind telling Uncle George that we Hover knew any “party organ” to do anything quite so “dirty” as to, while running a professodly strictly non-partisan paper, in a repub lican community, to fill the columns of Baid paper with the most vi ruleDt People’s Party matter, in the hopes of deluding his Republican Subscribers into forsaking their party; and then to crown the whole matter, and at the same time reveal tli-* base hypocrisy, when the eledtiou is over, by openly rejoicii g in the success of the Democrats. We never knew any “party organ” to be quite so dirty or quite so unprincipled as that, dear Uncle, nor the editor of one who had the cheek to try to get a post-office into his family us a reward tor that kind of work. wtfm*. V T

The selection of that tripleplated, three-timea-in-on e-year mogwumpiog Mugwump, Judge Gresham, for Cleveland’ssecretary of state, is a bitter dose for old line Democrats, but they will hare to stand it, for the day of the Mugwump is sorely at hand. Mr. Gresham was not only a strong Republican in 1888 when he wanted the nomination for the presidency, and, a year or two later, when he “wanted on” the Supreme bench, but even so late as the beginning of the year 1892, when the strong but ineffectual attempt was made to organize the Republican party of this state in his interest By July of last year lie whs, with one or two small reservations, a Populist, and a couple of months later, a Democrat in all his glory. He is a Mugwump of high degree, truly. For all that he will make a good secretary, and be in fact, the ablest man in Cleveland’s administration.

A good many American papers have nearly gone into hysterics in denouncing the French court for its action in sentencing the venerable and illustrious Ferdinand De Lesseps to five years imprisonment and a heavy fine. The old man is over 85 years old, ajnd absolutely decrepit, unable in fact to rise from his bed. Under such circumstances the sentencie is a pretty bad dose, and especially would it be so if any attempt were made to put it into actual execution, but of this there is no* probability whatever. But considered merely as what the sentence is a vindication of justice, we (lo not think it too severe. If anyope will carefully read Admiral Atiimen’s article in the February North American Review on the Subject of the Panama Canal, he cau scarcely fail to be convinced that De Lesseps was not only a party to the enormous and wholesale bribery and corruption connected with that matter, but that he was the very leader in deceiving the French people as to the probable cost of building the canid, and thereby leading them to invest their money in an enterprise which at best he must have known could never begin to pay adequate returns on the money it cost.

Our esteemed but not very robust contemporary, the Remington Press, seems to have been greatly wrought up over our over true description, of the great advantages that paper possesses as a medium for public advertising which all the people of the county are interested in, and it devoteejtwolong articles to the subject not to speak of quite a number of squibiets from the brainlet of a dudelet In all those articles however, there is no attempt made to explain how it can be that such a paper as the Press, with its very limited and strictly local circulation and which, as we before showed, is properly selected as the medium for “public” advertising which is wanted to be kept from th“ public, cau do public advertising “just as wed” as the county seat p -.pers, or even well at all. lhe Ayer’s American Newspapei \nuual for 1892, is just published. It is the most generally recognized standard aud reliable newspaper register and it gives the circulation of the Remington Press a* 5184 and of the Rensselaer Republican at 1,100. With such comparative circulations, it is no wonder that the Press claims t» be able to do the public advertising oheaper than The Republican, but how about the “better?” We know that Ayer’s ratings are correct in the case of The Republican and have no reason to think they are not right in the case of the Press. .

But although Bro. Major carefully avoids refering to the selfevident unfitness of his paper as a medium of public advertising, he does make a full confession on one point. He freely admits that he has always charged full legal rates for publishing sample ballots, and asserts his intention to

do the same every chance he gets, and ©yen intimates that the publisher who charges less than the law allows for such work, is a fool for his pains. And all this in face of the fact that only two weeks before, his paper denounced as *‘legal ‘ robbery,” the charging of such rates by otherqjapers for the same kind of advertising! Reformers who, themselves, do the very things they want to “reform” in others, are common enough, but it is ..ot often you can gat one of them into such a hole that he has to own up to it. Bro. Major “gets around” our suggestioh that postmasters’ salaries might as properly be cut down as printers’ fees, by saying that the revenues of the post, offices come in larger proportion from, “bankers, and business men and professional men,” than does the money which the public pays the printer. In this we are sure that our esteemed brother is entirely mistaken. We do not believe there is any source of public revenue which so largely comes from the common people as that of the post office, Everybody uses the post-office, men, women and children.

In regard to the Remington postmastership, which Bro. Major is trying to control, he makes the rather fine point that he is not, himself, a candidate, and wouldn’t have it, no-how. Nevertheless our good old brother is hustling most actively to get the place for his son, even though the said son, be. as Bro. Major says, 37 years old, too large to spank aud his own boss, since lo! these many years. Bro. Major’s contention that public printing should be done as cheaply as ordinary display business advertising has no better foundation than his claim that the Press can do the public advertisising “just as well” as the county seat papers; but want of time compels us to defer furnishing the proof of that fact until next week.