Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 September 1893 — TOPICS OF THESE TIMES. [ARTICLE]

TOPICS OF THESE TIMES.

“SUNSHINE AND SHADOW.” The Hoosier commonwealth is celebrated for its common school system the world over, and it is doubtful if any organized community in the United States can show a larger percentage of intelligence, culture and refinement. The State has kept in touch with the progress of the century in all the best developments of the time, and our universities, cblleges and higher institutions of learn - ing, fostered and encouraged by public appropriations and private "benefactions, - vie with each other and successfully compete with the institutions of the older States that have-had the curftulative advantage of age and experience that naught but time can bring. We can point with pride to one of the most popular poets of the day as a product of Indiana —Riley's songs being as indigenous to the soil as the bluegrass sod and fragrant clover of which he sings—while all native Hoosiers who have read Ben Hur are proud of the fact that its talented author was born and reared in conditions similar to those amid which they have themselves grown to years of maturity. Yet with all this and’ more in our favor,—-presenting a roseate picture that can hardly be overdrawn,—with a public sentiment powerful for all good things and eagerlor the welfare of tlfe State and its people, with laws 'ample "for th§ protection of our citizens in their lives, property and honor, with every external circumstance apparently tending to the ways of pleasantness and the paths of peace, we have within the past three or four months been disgraced by the most shocking outlawry possible to the Yazoo bottoms or the most desperate settlement of the Western frontier. The mining camps of the mountains, the plains of Texas, or the most illiterate regions of the sunny slave-cursed South have furnished no more revolting —none so totally inexcusa-ble-exhibitions of an utter disregard for honor, right and common decency, than have occurred within the borders of the great and enlightened commonwealth of Indiana during the present year. Murders and outrages of the most revolting character followed by lawless lynchings that would shame South Africairsavages, white cap visitations—and anti-white cap receptions that were the one redeeming feature of the whole disgraceful catalogue—with the crowning infamy of the greatest prize-fighting ring in the United States, where riot and ruffianism defied the law —where the offscourings of the great city on Our northern border frothed over into our jurisdiction to exhibit its unlovely presence simply because it dare not do so at home, and because by reason of official procrastination and the laws delay it was permitted to have a brief reign upon our soil. Fortunately our Governor has at last been aroused to a sense of his duty and we are not to be disgraced in this way again—at least it is improbable that so flagrant and exten--stvean exhibition-will again be attempted. Seemingly this appalling array of unlawful and disgraceful exhibitions had filled our measure of woe to the brim, but it was reserved for us to furnish the world in addition to the foregoing register of crime, the most daring and successful train robbery that has occurred in this or any other country—one in which the largest number of outlaws were engaged, and if the truth was known, the largest sum of money was secured. In view of all these disgraceful and unlawful exhibitions, the peaceful citizen of Indiana —who has flattered himself that he was living in a State where culture, and refinement and all the finer attributes of modern civilization were largely in the ascendant, where life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness were assured and safecan only ask, “Where are we at?”

INDIAN COTTON. Not onlv has India become a formidable competitor in the markets of the world with her surplus of wheat, but the cotton production of that country threatens to ruin, or at least greatly retard that industry in the United States and England by its unwholesome competition. The cotton plant has been cultivated in the land of the Hindoos for twen-ty-three hundred years, and Herod-otus-tells of its wild trees bearing fleeces like sheep. In the last century, as late as 1793, the annual import of Inian haAd-wove cotton goods into Great Britain was valued at ♦6,250,000, despite laws prohibiting the wearing of Indian muslins and calicoes. Indian fabrics continued in general use in England and on the Continent, and veen in America, until machine-made goods drove them from the markets of the world and greatly lessened their consump-

tion in India itself. The change from the hand to toe power - loom worked no lasting hardship to European or American people, but the baleful effects of the change in India brought great suffering to millions of people, and forced into the ranks of agricultural labor a vast surplus of underpaid slaves to compete with laborers already subsisting on wages so low that starvation was always imminent. Naturally relief was sought and some thirty years ago the first cotton mill was established in the Bombay district. Therte are at this time 135 mills in all Indiu. with twenty others in process of construction. All have been phenomenally successful, and the consumption of raw cotton has increased 300 per cent, in the last ten years. It is an industrial revolution that threatens the very existence of the great English manufacturing centers, with a sympathetic influence that bodes no good to American industries of a similar character. The Indian mills are equipped with machinery of the best construction, directed by trained European experts. The operatives are quite as expert as Europeans and far more tractable, having never learned to strike and having no other idea than to work like slaves for a mere existence. The hours of labor are longer and the wages less than onefourth paid to operatives for the same task in England. The great drawback to the ultimate success of the Indian cotton industry seems to be a lack of fuel, which must be im■ported from England. But this difficulty seems likely to be obviated as coal has been discovered in Assam. Indian coal is of very poor quality, however, and fuel will have to be imported for some time at least. The advantages of the Indian manufacturers over European mill-owners are great in many ways. Not only has he cheaper raw material and labor, but he can buy his cotton and sell his goods for silver, and pay for his labor in the same coin—as all must in the Eastern markets —without any abatement in its value by reason of adverse exchange. Whenever the capacity of Indian cotton mills shall equal the demands of the Orient for goods of all grades it can be safely said that English, or even American, competition for that trade will come to an end, and that day can not in the nature of things commercial be far distant.

MODERN MUNCHAUSEN’S. The press dispatches during the entire summer have been burdened with alleged information concerning President Cleveland’s health, the inference naturally to be drawn from the mass of collated intelligence seeming to tend toward the inevitable conclusion that Mr. Cleveland was in reality suffering from some mysterious malady that it was deemed absolutely necessary should be concealed from the people of the country. So persistent and ingenious did these almost dailj manifestos become, and so circumstantial ■were the details given, that, in spite of repeateddenials from persons-in - position to know the truth, the public finally accepted them as substantially true and began to consider the probable consequences of the President’s demise. Promptly at the time announced, however, Mr. Cleveland returned from his summer vacation, rosy, rugged and robust, arriving at the White House at 4 o’clock a. m- and without retiring took breakfast and proceeded at once to the consideration of public business, serenely unconscious that by so doing he was proving numberless correspondents to be unconscionable liars and Munchansens of the most versatile and prolific powers. Now that the enterprising journalists have had their innings, an intimate friend, who has been a constant visitor at Buzzard’s Bay during the summer, states that the only foundation for the entire aggregation of misinformation printed about the deadly malady said to be carrying the President to an early grave was a very bad case of toothache, and that Mr. Cleveland’s prolonged summer vacation was necessary because of his increasing flesh and the excessive heat always prevalent in Washington during the summer solstice. Such enterprise is, a curse to modern journalism, and one against which readers and editors have no adequate safeguard. Editors must print the news as it is reported to them and trust to the rereliability of correspondents and telegraphic reports for its truth. Readers can do as they please about believing what the read, and it is quite as well to take with several grains of reservation any newspaper story that seems at all extravagant or improbable. The Duke of Westminster is said to have expended about <5,000,000 in rebuilding Eaton Hall, now one of the palatial private mansions in England.