Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 November 1898 — Reformer Babcock, The Truth-Teller. [ARTICLE]

Reformer Babcock, The TruthTeller.

By way of illustrating how reliable a reformer is our contemporary of the Democrat, and how well entitled he is to call other people liars, we note down a few of his many absolutely false assertions, during the campaign now just closing. He asserted that such a thing as cutting (unsigned) pages from a public record, to correct an error was-“unheard of.” We showed that right here in Rensselaer' the last democratic auditor resorted to that expedient, quite a number of times.

He asserted that his paper published the first information ever given to the people about that $4,000 loan. We refered him to the fact that the facts about the loan were published in The Republican of July 9th 1896, and the same can be seen by anyone from the files of this paper, at the court house. In regard to this same loan, he asserted that the county levy this year was reduced for political purposes, before the loan was paid. We showed that the loan was paid on August 24th and the tax levy was not made until some time in the following September. He asserted that the commissioners had the court house yard coping foundations torn up arid relaid and a lot of defective cement walk condemned and rebuilt for political purposes; and that the condemned foundations and walks were all right. The truth is, however, that there is not a business or professional man in Rensselaer, whether Democrat or Republican, ■who does not know that the first foundation was defective and wholly unfit to support the heavy coping. Nor is there a man in anyway connected with either the building or the tearing up the old walls, who does not know the same thing. And the same thing may be said ot the condemned walks.

He asserted, for the sake probably of winning sympathy, that the Republican papers were all the time calling him “liar” and other hard names. Yet he knows that no such abusive epithets have been used about him or anyone else, by this paper, during the campaign. He asserted that a number of counties which he named had built court houses which did not exceed in cost the original estimate. We know positively that some of those named did exceed the original estimate, and do not doubt that all of them did.

The above are some examples of direct, out-and-out false statements. Of others less direct but essentially equally false and more slanderous, were all his intimations that there was anything wrong or corrupt in the removal of two pages of unigned erronious writing from a record book; and in the $4,000 loan; and in the amounts paid on engineer’s estimates on the Keener gravel roads ; and in the same connection, the attempt to convey the impression, that all the money paid out on bridges on those roads and for the preliminary expenses of the same, came out of the people of Keener tp., when they were paid for out of the county revenue. These instances might be much extended, but they are sufficient to show what a reliable reformer and wholly “Truthful James” this Democrat editor is.