Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 March 1895 — THE NEW LIBEL LAW. [ARTICLE]

THE NEW LIBEL LAW.

The Alabama legislature has passed a law permitting juries to impose the death penalty for train robbery. It is a good law, and would, be still better if train wrecking was also made punishable- with death. . . . \. . .. ======== — Indiana stands at the head of the states in the ownership of unincumbered homes, namely, 74.26 per cent of the whole. lowa follows with 73.24 -per cent; next comes Wisconsin with 70.47, and Illinois next with 70.18 percent. The largest number of mortgaged homes in the manufacturing New Lngland states. Governor Matthews has appointed the five members of the board of trustees for the State Soldiers’ Home for which the Legislature has made an appropriation of $75,000. They are the men who were recommended to him by the Grand Army Committee, which has taken the lead in the matter. They are James R. Carnahan, of Indianapolis; Col. D. N. Foster, Fort Wayne; James 18. Wallace, Lafayette; Christopher J, Murphy, Evansville, and Isiaah B. McDonald, of Columbia City. Three of them are Republicans and two Demoarats.

There is much good sense in the following from a writer’ in Scribner on the effects of constantly sermonizing the young on the subject of saving. While the wisdom ,of economy atall times and in all things cannot be gainsaid it is none the less a menace to the peace of mind of the young folks to keep up a ceaseless harping on the necessity of providing against the . “rainy day.” Ihe author in question says: “If my choice were free, I would rather give my boy the memory of a fairly l‘ a l’Py am l untrammeled life up to twenty, and leave, him nothing then but a consequent reasonable optimism, and unsapped courage, and a disposition to regard money as a means rather than an end, then keep him constantly face to face with a specter of possible poverty, fill him full of premature cares, and leave him with five thousand or twenty thousand a year and no memories or wellgrounded healthy tasts, or world to live in, indeed, except such as he common;y sets out to make for himself under these circumstances which is w, rse than nothing.”

Thanks to a republican legislature, the infamous Grubbs libel law, which was passed aud kept upon the statute books by the Kopelke brand of democratic statesmen (?), has been wiped out of existence and another and better substituted. The new libel law, which has passed both houses will have a tendency to shut off a lot of people who seem to think that newspapers are published for the purpose of giving them an opportunity to be sued for libel. Some folks are always injured by the appearance of their name in print, and keen to sue the paper for the injury. The chief provision of the bill just passed is that the aggrieved party can only recover for actual damages, and suit can not be brought without first giving the newspaper three days notice that a correction is demanded. If this is made in good faith and it is shown that the libelons article was published in good faith there is no ground for a claim for damages.—Winamac Democrat- J ournal. Our Democratic neighbor over east is eminently correct in giving to our Republican legislature the the credit for doing away with that most unjust piece of legislation, the Grubbs libel ..tow. The Journal also correctly sums up the points of the new law, except

that its provisions are not quite as tated in the last sentence, nor would it be right that they should be so. A correction, with proof that the alleged libelous publicaHnn was made in good faith, does not prevent the injured,party from obtaining damages, but it prevents him from obtaining anything but actual damages. Under the Grubbs law exemplary or punitive damages were provided, and the facts that the publication was made in good faith, and that the proper correction was made did not have any effect to mitigate the publisher’s punishment. This new law is fair to all, publishers as well as the public.