Rensselaer Republican, Volume 28, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 December 1896 — A Significant Fact. [ARTICLE]

A Significant Fact.

Governor Elect Mount has again demonstrated his adundant good sense in sitting down hard on all propositions for a grand ball, and military parade on the occasion of his inauguration. We t|ish President Elect McKinlev could take the same stand on the proposed grand pageants when he is inaugurated. — . The popocratic papers have figured it out that a change of 40,000 votes in ten close states would have elected Bryan. Yes, and a change of 40,000 in five close Bryan states would have given McKinley 58 more electoral votes. One fact is just as important as the other, and neither of them are of any importance at all. The really important fact is that McKin. ley’s popular majority was over three quarters of a million votes. The bonded debt of Indiana is being rapidly reduced, and it is estimated that at the present rate of canceling outstanding obligations at the end of six the state will not owe a dollar. The present financial board is composed of Republican business men, and it is to be hoped that the sound and economic policies they have originated and pursued will be continued by their successors, no matter what political party they represent. . —Lafayette Courier.

Everybody felt sorry for editor White of the Emporia (Kans.) Gazette when they heard how Kansas went in the late election, but it is a relief to know that he has adapted himself to his surroundings and can howl as loud as Jerry Simpson or Mrs. Lease. Here is his latest keynote; .. —' *'• Let’s tear loose from the plutocracy and arrogance and brains and respectability of the corrupt and unsympathetic east Let’s gather to ourselves here in. Kansas all our jewels and flounce out of the sisterhood of ‘States. Let’s take our doll rags and quit civilization and annex ourselves to barbarism. Let’s abolish interest; make poverty a felony; punish work with a sentence of enforced silence; make ' thinking a penal offense; enact brains into buttermilk; paint over “ad astra per aspera” with blue mud, and in its place inscribe in letters of seething goose grease: “Vive la Lease —hurrah for hell.”

The President’s message appears in full in one of our inside pages. The document is a good deal of a disappointment to the many people who, basing their expectations on past experiences, were looking for something sensational. But when it is remembered that Grover is no longer bidding for nominations, the absence of the sensational feature is accounted for. It is quite a sensible and conservative paper on the whole. The portions devoted to Cuba and our relations with Spain, in which the sensational features were looked for with special confidence, are rather mild but on the whole wise and statesmanlike. In discussing financial matters he appears to be so surprisingly well pleased because the national debt is now increasing at the unexpectedly slow rate of only twenty-five or thirty millions a year, that he is begining to think the Wilson bill quite a good kind of a law after all. One Good Result. The Indianapolis Journal says: One of the good results of the Republican contest which came in this State by the election of 1894 if the change is prison management. The Prison North was in better condition than that in Jeffersonville, but in both the management was content with old methods. Regarding one thing only were the directors alert—the finding of places for as many Democrats as possible* After the investigation of 1893 Governor Matthews should have made each a change as would hnve insured the appointment of a new warden. In both prisons a deficit of about •20,000 was found when' the change - Ic« “ e

was made, wnich had been concealed by permitting the wardens to use a considerable portion of the appropriation made for the next fiscal year during the previous year. Auditor Daily ~jpat a stop to this vicious practice. The officers of Both prisons have adopted the sensible system of grading* convicts upon the basis of their, conduct. This had the effect of revolutionizing prison discipline.

r.’ Bryan recently stated that it was a significant fact that the silver sentiment was the strongest where the question had longest been considered, namely in the West and South. In commenting on this statement the Terre Haute Express remarks that this was also true of slavery, which was strongest in the South where it had been longest considered. Continuing the Express says; “The efilver question for a long time earned the South and West 'by default. It is a very significant fact that in the West, and ia the South, too, where sound money had few or no advocates, as soon as sound money was fairly and ably presented the free silver sentiment lost ground. Bryan did not get out the full vote of the south. In several States where silver had been pushed for several years and seemed to predominate there was a great reaction, as in lowa, for instance, whose first poll showed a small majority for free coinage, and yet it gave McKinley a plurality of nearly 70,000. The most significant fact was that the tacit acceptance for years of free coinage was swept away by a short campaign of education.”