Rensselaer Union, Volume 12, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 September 1879 — Democratic Cries of Distress. [ARTICLE]

Democratic Cries of Distress.

The Republican triumphs in California and Maine have occasioned serious alarm among the leading Democrats. These results indicate a decided change of political sentiment within the test year from one end of the continent to the other. The California delegation .In Congress was equally divided between tne Republicans and Democrats; the Republicans elect all the Congressmen from that State this year. Last year the Democrats and Greenbackers combined elected two Congressmen in Maine; this year the Republicans sweep the State. All this has. set the Democrats to thinking, and the more they think about it tne more alarmed they become. We print this morning some evidences of the Democratic distress. The Kansas City Times virtually abandons the hope of carrying Ohio, and expresses the fear that the dissension among the New York Democrats will result in the election of Cornell. It says that the Democrats “ought to carry Ohio and New York,” but admits in the same sentence that “they ought to have carried California and Maine.” The outlook is discouraging, and the Times does not hesitate to attribute the fact to Democratic blunders, chief among which was the extra session of Congress and the revolutionary method by which it was proposed to break down the National Election laws. The Louisville CourierJournal is equally concerned as to the future. Commenting on the result of the California and Maine elections, it says tlu.t the Republicans only need to carry No v York and Ohio to “succeed in confront,, i the Solid South with a Solid North.’ ’ Of course Democratic rout could be th; cnly result of that situation. The same journal admits that the Republicans are “ better fixed ” for the next National con. ict than the Democrats, “who have been doing their best to kick the fat in the tire since the 4th day of March, 1877.” The mistakes which the Courier-Journal thinks have wrought so much damage are the opposition to Tilden within the party and the war that has made “ upon the only Democratic Senator who has the smallest chance of being President,” meaning Bayard. Mr. Watterson has always clung to the idea that the chief reliance for Democratic success is the alleged wrong endured by the party when Tilden was counted out, ana that to make this reliance sure it is necessary for the Democrats to run the old ticket of 1876. He has evidently given up all hope for this, renounces in effect all pui> pose of leading in the fight, and says he will work in the ranks, though overcome with the fear of defeat. There are still other evidences of Democratic alarm. The chief party organ in Washington plainly advises the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives, which has been reduced to a very precarious condition by the gain of the Republican Congressmen from California, to throw out every Republican in Congress whose election was close enough to warrant a contest. From Ohio comes the information that Ewing and his friends have practically given up their State ticket, and wifi now turn their efforts to the Legislature, with the purpose of saving the Senatorship. Hard upon this comes the open breach in New York between Tilden and Tammany, which cannot fail to engender the most bitter dissension between the two factions of the party in that State. Altogether, there is a very general scare in the Democratic camp, and there will be various suggestions of. a strategic character to save the party. But mere strategy will not avail. The reason Why there has been a change of sentiment from’ California to Maine, the reason why Ohio and New York are likely to go Republican, and the reason why the Democrats are growing so despondent over the prospects for the Presidential election of next year, must, be looked for outside of party strategy. The old Latin motto might be truthfully paraphrased by saying, “It is Democratic to err;” but the serious blunders of that party are in principle, and not in strategy. It is tne popular apprehension of the dangerous purposes of the Democratic party that has induced conservative people everywhere to turn again to the Republican party at the threshold of a new era of prosperity, and created a general disinclination to risk any change in the finances or politics of the country that may check (he new tendency of things. The Democratic party (or at least the ruling element of that party, which has always made its caucus supreme) is committed to State-sov-ereignty and soft money, and the people erf this country are afraid of both heresies. No amount of strategy will serve to allay, this popular apprehension.—Chicago Tribune.

—A soda-water generator exploded in an. Albany, N. Y., drug-store one day recently. While they were charging the fountain the druggist asked ms assistant how many pounds of gas were on and was told that there were two hundred and thirty. Me then reached up to turn the valve which lets the gas into the fountain, when the generator exploded, filling the eyes of both with its contents and knocking them down. The force of the explosion drove the vitriol chamber, weighing about sixty pounds, up through the flooring, making quite a large hole, and drenching the contents of one sidfi of the store. The two men were badly burned.