Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 December 1898 — Nerve Without Parallel. [ARTICLE]

Nerve Without Parallel.

For cool, persistence in false assertions, right in the face of indisputable proof of the falsity of its charges, the action of the Democrat in still insisting that Thomas Thompson was paid $8 rent on his room for election purposes, in Marion precinct No. 2, surpasses auything in that line that ever came within our observation. When the Democrat first made ttiese false statements, it may, possibly, have thought it was telling the truth, being perhaps misled by its own or some of its agents blundering, or careless or imperfect rending of the bills and records, but there is no such excuse possible for its repetition of the slander after all the true facts had been plainly published. The Democrat claims to have obtained its facts from the commissioners' docket, which it says is a record of their deliberations and allowances. Now the docket is no such record. It is merely a sort of memorandum book, where claims and other cases to be acted on by them are briefly noted. For instance, when claims are entered in it, their nature is indicated by only a word or two, and the bill itself is referred to by number, and this bill is before the commissioners when the claim is acted upon. When the claims are acted upon, either ullowed in full, or in pan, dismissed or continued, then they are entered in the true commissioners’ record, and their nature and disposal clearly stated.

The editor of the Democrat probably knows these facts, and his trusted advisers certainly do, and they know that if anyone will go to the auditor’s office and look in the commissioners’ record at the proceedings for the recent November sessions, they will find that every word The Republican has stated in this matter is the strict and absolute truth: and every word that the Democrat has stated is wholly or essentially false.

They will find from this record that Mr. Thompson filed a bill for two day's services on canvassing boards, $4, and room rent, lights and fuel, SO, or $lO in all and that this bill was cut down to SB. The reduction being on the item for rent, ns Mr. Thompson, and all the yther inspectors, were entitled to and received $2 per day for attending the canvassing boards. The Democrat says the bill was filed for ?8 and allowed at SB, and was all for room rent. They will find also that each and every one of the 20 election inspectors of the recent election, besides receiving $8 for acting as inspectors, also filed bills and were allowed pay for either one day's services for attending the county canvassing bonrd, or two days for township and county, where a township board was necessary. And these facts are set out very plainly in the record and had been so set out more than a week before

the Democrat brazenly declared that the record does not show that any of the 20 except Mr. Thompson was allowed anything but the $S as inspector. Furthermore, if anyono will take the trouble to look they can find, even in the commissioners’ docket itself, from which the Democrat pretends to have got its facts, conclusive proof of the Democrat’s intentional and outrageous dishonesty in this matter. They will find that the Democrat has not only ignored the record proper, and the, bills themselves, in trying to make out

its case against Mr. Thompson and the commissioners, but it deliberately suppressed part of the facts which the docket itself shows. Heire are the facts: The bills of the inspectors for mileage and attending the canvassing boards, though set out at length on the record proper, were most of them abbreviated on the docket to “election expenses.” Mr. Thompson’s bill, however, which contained the item for rent, as well as the items for two days attendance on the canvassing boards, was set out more in full, thus: “Thomas Thompson, election expenses 4th precinct, and rent of room and lights and fuel for elections.” But the Democrat had the dishonesty to leave out the words “election expenses,” and to publish the item as only for rent, lights and fuel. And in face of all these facts the Democrat says that the writer of its article and a reliable citizen will both* make affidavits that the statements as published in the Democrat were absolutely true! If anyone makes such an affidavit he will commit a whole job lot of perjury which could and should land him behind the bars of the penitentiary.