Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 March 1893 — Political Ingratitude. [ARTICLE]

Political Ingratitude.

Thdianapolis*Toumal:That was a sharp and merited thrust given Senators who were advocating a repeal of that section of the election law which provides for advertising sample ballots. “You sit here and pass bill after bill for the farmers,” he said, ’’but you would deny the man who fights for your party every day in the year the right to print these ballots. You climb <wer one another to put an additional doorkeeper on the Senate force, and then talk about economy. No newspaper man has been here in the interest of this bill. The best investment that can be made is to have these ballots published.” Mr. Magee is familiar with the newspaper business, and knows that the public expects a paper to be at the service of its party’s candidates from year’s end to year’s end, to give up its space when called upon, and to put aside profitable business for political con-

venience at any time—all for the party’s sake and for glory. He has also probably encountered the fact that when state and county officers and legislators whom it has helped to elect, and who could not have been elected without it, are in a position to reciprocate a fovor in a legitimate, honorable way by directing public advertising to its columns, such business, as a rule, goes to obscure and disreputable sheets because, accordng to the prevaling official argument, the latter must be kept in a friendly mood, and the respectable high-class paper does not vary its opinions and principles according to its counting-room receipts. The Journal had nothing to do with the advertising clause of the ballot law as it now exists, and has taken no interest in the movement to repeal it, but is free to say that in expressing their disregard for newspapers in general as they do, the Senators who urge the repeal show the basest ingratitude to the county press to which they owe their present temporary prominence.