Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 May 1894 — THE CAMPAIGN. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE CAMPAIGN.

An Off Year, But the Contest Is None the Less Important. The Cleveland Badge. Macomb Journal. Here is a story from actual life that is too good to be lost: A lady in Macomb, wife of one of our merchants who voted for Cleveland and reform, was down town, the other day, doing some trading at one of the leading grocery stores. She was well acquainted with the proprietor, and when through ordering goods fell into a chat with that gentleman. After awhile she suddenly started up and said: “Well, this won’t do. I must hurry home and finish my husband’s Cleveland badge.”

■ The grocer is a Republican, and he flew up in a minute, saying: “I j'houM think you would be thinking H anything but making Cleveland J adges these hard times, an.'. I can’t imagine what sort of a badge yon jpould make.” “I’ll tell you what it fs, sir,” the spunky woman retorted. “It’s a patch about the size of a palm-leaf fan on the*seat of his I j reusers. It’s the prevailing hid up j fn the Second Ward since the presjj nt administration came in. Why, j ven the Republicans are putting ]them on. And there never was a ] jnore appropriate badge in the I world.” And with a smile the lady passed out, while the somewhat sold ’ |;rocer soliloquized: “That woman diagnosed the case precisely. It’s as appropriate a badge for Cleveland and reform as the skull and cross-bones is . the proper coat of arms for the poison label.” —— Democratic Incapacity. St. Louis Globe-Democrat. It would be difficult to find in the /entire annals of parliamentary procedure anywhere in the world a (more humiliating confession of incapacity by the dominant party than |‘s made by the Democracy in the [House of Representatives in its rtdoption of the quorum-countingde-jvice. That party in that body has a 'lead of more than forty votes in excess of a quorum, and yet, day after day, the wheels of legislation were absolutely stopped because it could jnot muster enough members to answer to their names to enable it to do business. Some members sat silent in their seats, but a larger number, on one pretext or other, or on qo pretext, absented themselves from the proceedings. The delinquents were alternately coaxed and denounced by the leaders of their .party and by the party press to perform the duties for which they were chosen, but neither sort of appeal was of avail.

What sort of answer to the charge of shiftlessness and imbecility will the Democratic Congressmen make a few months hence when they ask their constituents for a renomination? How will they explain why, with their overwhelming majority, they were unable to muster enough members to transact the business which the people commissioned them to undertake? When they are called to account for the days and weeks of the session which were wasted, what excuse can they offer which will be worth a moment's serious examination? Notwithstanding ihe special session of three months last summer and fall the business of Congress is, on the whole, but very ■little farther advanced than it is at this date in average years. Outside of the tariff bill, indeed, which is .ahead of the usual stage which it is in at the middle of April in the Congresses which are not summoned before the statutory time, the public business is behindhand, and it is likely to remain behind throughout the term. Representative Russell, of Georgia, is right in his assertion that the Republicans wo6ld never have ad' pted quorum-counting expedient if the/ had anything like the majority wtiich the Democracy has today. This concession is no disparagement to the new rule, but is made in the interest of truth. The device put in operation by the Republicans in the Fifty-First Congress, which the Democrats have indorsed by id pi'ng i' t was and is an excellent legulutioi , which must ultimately find a place in the rules of all legislative assemblies, but it was suggested by dil - culties such as the Democrats have not encountered in recent years. In the House in that Congress the Republicans started out with a majority of only five or six. Under such conditions, the Democrats refusing to answer to the r names, the absence of three or four Republicans

would break a quorum and block business. It was a dangerous exigency, and the remedy devised to meet it was an innovation on the established rules of parliamentary procedure in this country. The rule, however, in operation conspicuously attested the wisdom of its framers, and while the Democrats are to be commended for their sense in seizing it, they, with their immense majority, deserve censure for the nervelessness and incapacity which have rendered its adoption necessary. t Slobbering on Voorhees. , White County Democrat. We notice that three of the several members of the executive committee of the Democratic State Editorial Association met at Indianapolis recently, to arrange a program for the mid-summer meeting of the association, and while there took occasion to pass a resolution “taffying” Senator Voorhees for his efforts towards carrying out the demands of the Democracy of Indiana. The writer is a member of the executive committee and would have been present to protest against any such foolishness had not the Democratic Central Committee of this county, of which he is a member, held a meeting the same day. It has always been a mystery to us why it is that no conceivable meeting of Democrats in this State, large or small, for whatever purpose, can be held unless Mr. Voorhees must be sfobbered on and eulogized. So invariablj’ has this been the case in the past that the conclusion forces itself upon us that it is a studied effort on the part of the Senator and his friends to mold public opinion favorable to his own personal advancement. As for the writer, we repudiate any and all such tactics, and especially is this the case in the present instance. Mr. Voorhees is not entitled to the commendation of Indiana Democratsbecause he has not faithfully represented them. The Democratic Legislature that Last returned Mr. Voorhees to the U. S. Senate was elected on a platform that unequivocally declared in favor of the “free and unlimited coinage of silver.” The national Democratic convention virtually declared the same thing, and yet Mr. Voorhees championed the repeal of the Sherman bill, thus virtually demonetizing silver. Again, Indiana Democrats are tariff reformers in the full meaning of that term, and they utterly repudiate the mongrel monstrosity which Mr. Voorhees, as chairman of the Senate finance committee, has reported and is supporting in the Senate. Democracy, and especially Indiana Democracy, has been too much in the habit of shaping its opinions after those of its officials and of making its platforms to suit the whims of its servants. The Democrat bows to no idol, and as a member of the executive committee of the State Editorial Association its editor repudiates the fulsome and undeserved flattery rendered a man who has failed to do the very things that resolution praises him for doing.