Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 September 1893 — Finest Publication of the Fair. [ARTICLE]

Finest Publication of the Fair.

A. democratic farmer* took his clip of wool to market and sold it for 124 cents per pound and then went to the postoffice after his pension check and received notice that his peusi- n had been stopped. At the same time he received a letter from his son in the city saying the factory where he worked had shut down and thrown him out of employment, and asking for money. So he went to the bank to get a certificate of deposit cashed, but found the bank had failed —then went home to vote the republican ticket.—Tol. Com.

The Boonville (Ind.) Standard mentions the case of a Warrick county veteran who was so enthusiastic a Democrat that during the last campaign he hung out an effigy of Benjamin Harrison for a target, and when Cleveland was elected he made a bonfire of his overcoat. He had been drawing a pension of .sl2 a month, but recently he received notice from Washington that the officials believed he was drawing a pension on a disease that existed only in his mind and he was given sixty days to prove the reverse, or suffer a cut to $4 per month. Now he wishes he had not burned his overcoat.

There was' to have been a sort of scrub prize fight at Roby, last Monday night, but Governor Matthews ordered 500 of the state militia to repair to the scene, and go into camp in that malarious and flea-infesled region, and the fight was declared off. We are glad that the governor has at last been goaded into the necessity of taking determined action against this Roby business, but at the same time it should be remembered that these prize-fights have a pretty clear legal right to be held in this state, under the provisions of a bill passed last winter —and which bill was introduced and championed by a democratic senator, and signed by Governor Matthews himself. Had not this bill become a law, the prize-fights could have been easily prevented by ordinary judicial means, and without the expensive and highhanded resort to military force, which the governor has now found necessary.

Last Thursday Commissioner of Pensions Lochren issued an order that the indiscriminate suspension of pensions must stop, and that, hereafter, suspensions without previous notice would be made only in cases where there was prima-facia evidence of -fraud. There are grave reasons for doubting the sincerity of this act ionof Hoke Smith, through his inferior officer and mouth-piece, Lochren. But whether sincere or insincere, the ostensible abandonment of their former practice of suspending pensioners without previous notice or time to gather new evidence, is an admission that that practice was wrong. Smith, Lochren <fc Co., have virtually admitted that they have been carrying on a wholesale business of illegally

and unjustly depriving soldiers of their pensions, and that they have got scared over the injury their acts were doing to the Democratic party. If they are not watched mighty close they will find some other less direct but equally unjust means ofg carrying out their Master’s behest to “purge the pension rolls.” The point is being made, in reference to the gravel road question now pending that if the vote next Saturday is in favor of the

roads, the Commissioners can put off their constr action until such a time as they think best, and until the financial prospects are better. This idea is undoubtedly derived from an insufficient study of the law. The framers of this law seemed to make it a special point to guard against any such delay upon the part of the commissioners. In Section 1, occurs this sentence:

“The vote on said question [the building of the roads] shall be certified by the proper officers of said election to the Board of Commissionera of the county, and if at such election a majority of those voting on said question are in favor of building such road’or roads, the Commissioners shall at once proceed to the construction of the same; but not otherwise.” This direction to proceed at once is further emphasized in Section 3, the first part of which reads as follows:

“It shall be the duty of the Commissioners, as soon as such returns have been made by the election officers, in favor of such road or roads to advertise + * * * * asking for bids for the construction of such road or roads.” There is no word or phrase in any way to modify or contradict these directions to proceed at once with the building of the roads as soon as the election is declared favorable to their construction. And as our Commissioners are law-abiding men, in good faith, we presume they will see no other course open for them, if the vote is in favor of the roads, but to proceed without delay, to have them built as ordered.

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