Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 June 1896 — WESTERN. [ARTICLE]

WESTERN.

Reuben H. Donnelley, publisher of the city directory, says the population of Chicago in this year 1896 is 1,750,000. This is official. The directory is not completed yet, but it is far enough along to enable its publisher to make a very close estimate as to the population of the city. Most of the Ohio candidates, headed by Alva Crabtree, of Springfield, nominee for Secretary of State, have withdrawn from the Prohibition State ticket as a result of the split at Pittsburg. A State convention of the new national party will be called at once and a full ticket nominated. It is claimed the broad-gaugers outnumber the narrow-gaugers three to one. Similar action will be taken throughout Ohio in regard to county tickets. Andrew N. Henderson, a Chicago commission merchant and old member of the Board of Trade, committed suicide in Humboldt Park Tuesday afternoon. While a park policeman stood within a few feet he shot himself in the left temple, dying almost instantly. A disastrous deal on Friday, which he knew he would be called upon to settle for Tuesday, was the immediate cause of the act, though he has been despondent over losses for a year or more. His fellow brokers say Mr. Henderson has not dealt heavily since his failure during the panic of 1893. Near Clay Center, Kan., John McCoy’s two sons, Robert. and Angus, shot and probably fatally wounded their father, a farmer. The boys then rode to town and gave themselves up and are now in jail. One year ago the parents were divorced. Later, the father shot at his wife through a window; and was afterward tried and acquitted on the ground of insanity. Lately the boys have been carrying revolvers, with the knowledge of the county attorney, for the, express purpose of defending themselves if attacked by their father. Tuesday night the old man took a horse from the home place, where the mother and children’ were living. The boys recovered the horse from the place where their father was stopping. The latter securedanother horse and followed. The boys opened fire and onb bullet passed 1 " through the father’s lung, lodging near the backbone. Doctors say he cannot live. There is a lockout at the works of the Illinois Steel Works at Chicago, and nearly 1,500 men are thrown out of employment thereby. The order closing the entire plant was issued by Superintendent Walker Tuesday evening, and went into effect an hour later. By 7 o.’clock the fires pad been drawn from under every furnace and the army of men had slowly filed out of the immense buildings and yards of the company. Every man carried with him a little bundle of clothes and a tin dinner pail. It will be months before either will be in service again. This march of the men into a period of enforced idleness of unknown length was quiet and' orderly. Few gathered around the gates to discuss the situation. The events of the last month had prepared the men for almost anything that could happen. The troubles inside the tight, high board fence marking the boundary line of the company’s possessions have been so numerous and complicated the workmen real ized affairs must soon come to an issue. Thus, while the issue came suddenly, it was not altogether unexpected. The color line was the direct cause of the lockout, although officers of the company do not admit it. They charge it entirely to a question of labor. In a riot Monday night several men were seriously shot. The directors of the Chicago Board of Trade at midnight Wednesday—voted-fo-find that- the charges against Philip D. Armour, Jonathan O. Armour and P. D. Armour, Jr., comprising the great packing and elevator firm of Armour & Co., had not been sustained. The complaint was that the Armour Elevator Company’s warehouses. “A,” “B” and “B Annex,” were regarded by the firm as one house and that grain transferred from one to another was not inspected in passing or any inspection fee paid to the board for the transfer. At the same time it was charged that the warehouse receipts were redated so that the traders who had grain stored there had not.time to get it removed and so were obliged to pay storage. However, the same charges against Alastair I. Valentine, manager of the Armour system of elevators, were sustained and after a bitter fight over the question of punishment it was decided to suspend him for twenty years. The disposition of the cases of the millionaire packer and his two sons wns easier of accomplishment, for only three directors voted to find them guilty as charged in the complaint of the committee. But a verdict wholly exonerating them, or, rather, declaring that the charges had no foundation in fact, was prevented by that element in the board which ij hostile to the packer.