Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 67, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 April 1899 — Up Against The Real Thing. [ARTICLE]

Up Against The Real Thing.

Representative Rifenburg of Hobart is advocating the forming of a new county out of four northern townships of Lake and Porter counties. Porter would give up Uuion and Portage townships and Lake county Hobart and North townships with Hammond as the county seat, says the Hammond Tribune of April 17. Who knows but Rifenburg may yet do something to entitle him to the thahks of the south half of Lake county.— Lowell Tribune. Evidently our Lowell contemporary would be glad to see the big and greedy Hammond cut off from Lake County. There is but slight prospect for such a desirable con. sumation, however. People who talk about forming new counties in Indiana, are generally doing so just to hear their heads roar. For they know that i they tried to put their talk into execution they would be up against tbe real thing, in the shape of section 229 of the state constitution, which says: “No county shall be reduced to an area less than 400 square miles; nor shall any county under that area be further reduced.” Thus Rifenburg can only take 100 square miles from Lake and 10 from Porter; and the Hammond and Hobart politicians want richer pickings than a county of only 110 square miles affords. On the part of Jasper county we are sure that so long as it must be tailed on to Lake as a representative district, it would view the separation of Hammond with a great deal of equanimity.