Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 April 1894 — Republican Town Ticket [ARTICLE]

Republican Town Ticket

Mr. Thompson, in his ditch article, published elsewhere, says “some of us * * have almost persuaded ourselves that we have a right t > spill our surplus water upon a lower surface.” Yet Mr Thompson knows full well that it is a principle of law and equity as old as Blacks tone, and a good deal older, that people have a right to “spill” their smplus water into its natural water courses, and he can quote neither law nor judicial decision that takes away that right. What would he have people do with their surplus water? Catch it in tanks and keep it until it evaporates, Or haul it away in barrels?

All accounts agree that most of the 1 ulton county delegates, elected last Saturday, are fox Johnson, and it is even claimed that the delegation is Bolid for him. If so, ho is already practically sure of the nomination. The statement has been so often made by those who were principles nr “hirelings” in that enormous scheme of injustice, the Iroquois ditch, that the law limited the amount which could be taxed

against land bene fitted, to $lO per j acre, that most people have come to believe the statement There is no truth whatever in it. The law is a subtleinstrument farperpetrating injustice, but it containsmo provision ,so openly “rotten” as that alluded to. The law contains no provision limiting the amount that may be be assessed against property that is benefitted. The statement that there is such a provision has been invented and circulated for a purpose. It is as unfounded as the attempt to .establish iu people’s minds the belief that this ditch law, or some decision of the Supreme Court reverses the principle, founded upon justice and common sense, that a property owner has a right to let his surplus water run where nature and nature’s God intended it to run. The theory that a “land-owner must take care of his own water,” that he can be made to pay for allowing his water to run into the channels, swails or swamps, where the natural configuration of the country makes it run, is not founded upoh any law, nor upon any decision ot the courts, and is contrary to justice and to common sense. After all their howling and racing at Czar Reed, the democrats have, adopted his quorum counting rules. It was, no doubt, a tough dose, and some of them make frightful faces over it, but they had to come to it.

We publish elsewhere an article from Mr. 8. P. Thompson on the all-important Subject of the Iroquois ditch. We think we fairly state the main purpose of the article when we say it is solely for the purpose of leading men’s minds to justify the assessment of lands already either well drained, or with sufficient outlet, and some of which will receive no benefits at all, and others very little, from the ditch. His arguments will not hold water, whether the ditch will or not. He remarks, for instance, that in hill countries where water runs like a torrent, it has a right to run, under the law. The inference being that in a flat country, where water runs, not like a torrent but like a canal, (like the proposed channel through Rensselaer for instance) it has no such lawful right. Yet Mr. Thompson knows very well that the right of water to run in its natural channels is the same in the flat country as in the hilly. The Supreme Court decision he quotes does not apply at all, and the people here would be flatter than their land, if they thought it did. If a ditch gives a good outlet to land that before had none, or, as in the case he quotes, gives a man access to land he formerly had to swim to get to, of course such land is benefitted, and nobody ever disputed the fact; but that does not justify the assessment of thousands upon thousands of acres, as in this case, which are bene fitted neither by direct drainage, by better outlets nor by better access. Nor the excessive assessment of thousands upon thousands of other acres which are benefitted comparativly little. Nor does it justify the ruining of the river in Rensselaer, when a little change in the plan would hurt the ditch so little and help the town so much.

Mrs. Lease stated in Indianapolis, a few days ago, that fusion with Democracy was the one sure road for populist destruction. How will the office-hungry brethren in this county relish such talk from her, at her meeting here today? Let us suppose a case, to illustrate the equity of the Thompson idea in drainage methods: A man goes to a neighboring state, or another part of this state, and finds a swamp of ICO acres. A water course runs through it, and an extensive and expensive ditching operation is required to drain it. The water course below it must be deepened for miles, and perhaps some of the distance through solid rock. Surrounding

the swamp and bordering on the water course above and below, are many farms of dry and cultivated land. The man buys the swamp for SIOO. He gets the channel cut below, it, and his laterals ru-n through it, and the whole cost is 000 assessed to his swamp land, ; and the rest of it is taxed up to the owners of the high, dry land near the swamp or above and below it, along the water course which runs through it, or any of its tributaries, and who, poor dolts, had hw&r ~ known” "before that they had no right. to “spill their surplus water” into the channels which nature made for it, lYhen it is all done, the swamp buyer has 100 acres of good land, worth $5,000, and which cost him SIOO first cost, and SSOO to drain, or SOOO iu all. Ami if he was at a!! shrewd lie got back at least S3OO of that SOOO in the shape of lawyer’s fees, for teaching the neighboring dolts who paid the other $19,500. what fools they used to be when they supposed it was right, in view of the law, for water to run down hill. It was a great scheme, and is identical in principle with what is being worked right here in Jasper county, on a much larger scale. The only difficulty in the way seenis to be that a great many of the dry land owners, whose duty and privilege it is to pay for draining the other man’s swamp, are not all dolts.

If there is any place on earth that was counted as a reliable Populist stronghold, and where they were expected to be making gains, it was Colorado. But in the elections there last week they were beaten out of their boots. The state is clearly counted among the Republican redeemed.

Trustee of First Ward, MOSES 15. ALTER. Trustee Second Ward, CHARLES W. COEN. Trustee Fourth Ward, JOHN M. WASSON, Town Treasurer, CHARLES C. STARR. Town Clerk, CHARLES M. BLUE. Town Marshal, THOMAS MCGOWAN.