Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 April 1894 — THE CAMPAIGN. [ARTICLE]

THE CAMPAIGN.

The Demoralized DemocracyVictory Assured for the Re- ' ■. publican Cause. •••--’■ The Reasons for Delay. Indianapolis Journal. . . - Already the Democratic organs are declaring that the Republican Senators are filibustering to prevent the passage of the tariff bill upon which Mr. Voorhees opened the debate a week ago today. As the days pass all these organs and all the freetrade champions will denounce the Republican Senators in indignant editorials and in much displayed headlines. They will be accused of a desire to prolong industrial paralysis for what they may think to be the interest of the Republican party. The free-trade orators and editors will assume that industry and business suffer because the Voorhees or the Wilson bill can not be passed at once. Doubtless some of them know better, but they are all anxious to shift the terrible responsibility of the present business paralysis. The Democrats have had the tariff bills under their control for four months. Both of them have been devised, revised and amended by Democratic committees, without “Consulting the Republican minority with regard to their provisions. They have taken their time and have two bills. And now, when the Voorhees bill comes before the Senate, Democrats desi re. to pass it at once before there is time for its proper consideration. The Senate had the McKinley bill before it more than two months, and yet it contained no essential change of tariff policy; but here is a bill against which the industries of the whole country have risen because it is proposed to most radically change the revenue and ■economic systems, and this important measure, involving the fate of millions of wage-earners and hundreds of millions of capital, must be forced through the Senate practically without time for the representatives of those who oppose it to discuss it and topresent the objections of the pepole interested, who were refused hearings by the Senate finance committee.

There is ground for reasonable hope that the bill before the Senate may be defeated. It cannot stand intelligent criticism. Already every local election shows that the great North is opposed to both the Wilson and the Senate committee’s bills as a measure before Congress was never before protested against. The country wants neither, and if this fact is emphasized it is quite probable that neither can be passed. At any rate, their defeat would be so great a boon to the country that it can stand a few weeks of uncertainty in addition to the year in which the Cleveland policy and the Democratic Congress have prostrated the business and the industry of the Nation. If either of the bills shall become law, the evils which the industries of the country apprehend will be’made certain. If a few weeks of discussion and amending or attempts at amending culminate in the defeat of both measures, the country can afford, and well afford, to wait while the battle is beingfonght.

Dictation of the South. Ohicaso Inter-Ocean. Against the protest of leading Missouri Democrats who live in the Eleventh Congressional District, and concede the election of Charles F. Joy to the Fifty-third Congress, the Democrats in the House have voted to unseat him for no other reason than that he is a Republican and a Democrat contested his right to the place. Mr. O’Neill's friends are all in Washington. He has little sup - port at home, where his defeat is acknowledged alike by friend and op - ponent. There seems to be no other reason for the unseating of Congressman Joy, of St. Louis, than to make another exhibition of the power of the Southern Democracy. The South is in the saddle and loses no opportunity for showing its horsemanship in riding over all opposition, whether It comes from without or within the Democratic party. It rules that party, and through it rules the country. The Southern Democrats have shown that bull-dozing and fraud at the polls wore not solely for the pur - pose of helping the Democratic party. These were means to an end, and the end was Southern control of the country. With 127 Congressmen from the fourteen Southern States, elected by fraud and force, these leaders have year after- year given 121 members to the Democrats and but six to the Republicans. Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia and Delaware have not had a Republican Representative in Congress for years. Missouri has had two, North Carolina and South Carolina one each, and Tennessee two. These six Republicans have alone represented the protection sentiment of the South, and none of them came from the States that have received mdtet benefit from protective legislation. Having ,J2l members of the Democratic caucus, consisting of 219 Congressmen, the South has a clear majority of 21, and is able to control the House, and through it force upon the country such legislation as it •ees flt. It is in the minority in the Houle, having only one third of the members, but with a clear ma

jority of the Democratic caucus and the blind obedience of Democrats to caucus dictation, and driven by Speaker Crisp, the South is able to sit in the saddle as securely as in the good old antebellum days. It elected the Speaker and he distributed the committees in such a manner as to place the Southern members in control of each to dictate legislation. These Southern men control every important committee and dictate every important act that goes back to the House with a favorable report. As an illustration of how complete is this Southern rule, Congressman Amos Cummings, of New York, a stanch Democrat, analyzes the committees and shows that while there are seventy-six Confederate veterand seventy-four Union veterans in this Congress there are forty-four ex-Confederate soldiers holding places as chairmen of committees and only eleven Union veterans holding similar places. Such soldiers as General Sickles, of New York, though a Tammany Democrat, has no recognition from this House, ruled by the solid South. . It is useless for Democrats from New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Ohio,or Illinois to appeal to the Fifty-Third Congress for consideration for their industries, because the South rules the caucus and dictates the policy of the party. It is useless for St. Louis Democrats to protest that Mr. O’Neill was not elected to represent them in this Congress. The South decides who is elected and who is not, and it has decided to give the seat occupied by Congressman Joy to Mr. O’Neil.

A Free Trade Fiction. Indianapolis Journal. Those papers which are appealing to Congress to pass the Wilson bill never fail to reiterate the statement that tariff revision was demanded by an overwhelming vote of the people at the polls in 1892. Every intelligent man who is familiar with all the facts relative to recent elections knows that the assumption is false; that the fraudulent vote of the naturalization mills in Chicago, New York and Brooklyn had more to do with the result than any change of sentiment regarding the tariff; but Chairman Carter, of the Republican National Committee during the campaign of 1892, has an article in the North American Review for April which shows the falsity of the free trade claim. In the first place, Mr. Carter shows that per cent, of the popular vote was 45.98 in 1892, which was the smallest since 1872. In 1888 his percentage was 48.63, when he was not elected. He next shows. that in the country north of Mason and Dixon's line and west of the old slave territory, id spite of the People’s party movement, Harrison’s' vote in 1892 was only 148,276 behind his vote of 1888, while Cleveland, the legatee of all defections, received 72,431 votes less in 1892 than in 1888 in the same ter 1 ritory. That is certainly not an “overwhelming verdict.” Mr. Car - ter shows that a change of 27.426 votes properly distributed in California, Delaware, Idaho. North Da - kota, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri and West Virginia would have given these States to Harrison and secured his election. It. was the use of an alleged sectarian school law which lost the Republicans Wisconsm. andrTvith the iHcgat vote in Chicago, gave Illinois to Cleveland. Indiana was lost to the Republicans largely because several thousand Republican farmers kept their agreement to vote the Populist ticket, while the Democrats who led in these negotiations under the direction of the Cleveland committee broke their pledges and in the secret ballot booths marked their ballots for Mr. Cleveland. It was the Homestead affair and the use made of it by Democratic managers which lost the Republicans thousands of the votes of organized labor in all of the older States. It was not hostility to protection which lost Kansas, Colorado, Nevada and other States to the Republicans, but an adhesion to the financial heresies of the Populists. These matters are of little consequence now, only so far as it is always useful to remove misapprehension. The North has never been for free trade, and it was nevermore hostile to it than at the present time, as the elections which have taken place show, and those in November will further demonstrate.