Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 21, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 March 1900 — Shame to the Indianapolis Press. [ARTICLE]

Shame to the Indianapolis Press.

The Indianapolis Press, of Fri day evening, has a big red cartoon on its front page labeled on top “Porto Rico’s Beneath the picture it reads “Out of the Frying Pan Into the Fire.” Porfo Rico is represented as a little naked nigger baby just in the act of jumping out of a frying pan labeled “Spanish Extortion” into a huge blazing fire named “U. S. Tariff Duties.” Now to our mind, this cartoon well represents about all thq sense truth and justice there is behind much of this great howl over the Porto Rico tariff- To represent the policy of the American nation towards Porto Rico, as generous a policy as was ever exhibited by any nation toward a conquered province in the history of the world, as worse than the unmitigated selfishness and robbery of Spanish rule, is a most infamous aud outrageous libel on America, its congress and its people. For years and years Spain lias been levying high taxes on the Porto Ricans, collecting seven or eight millions every year, nearly everydollar of which was either sent to Spain or absorbed by Spanish officials in Porto Rico. While the inhabitants of the island were allowed to live in poverty and ignorance. Not ten per cent, of the adults able to read or write; and noroads or other conveniences.

The United States, after making them a free gift of $3,000,000, to help them out after the calamity of the great hurricane, now prop >ses a very light tax, enough to produce a million or so a year, and every d *llar of which is to be spent fa Porto Rico itself in building school houses and roads and in furuishing employment to the people. Not only that but another free gift of $2,000,000 is also proposed “Out of the frying pan into the tire!”' indeed. Our treatment of Porto Rico, past aud proposed, has been and will be, generous beyond all precedent and yet the Press represents it as worse than Spanish robbery and misrule. Shame of shames to the Indiana paper which dares to utter such a wicked, such an infamousdibel on the American people!

New Stamp Books. Books of postage stamps will be on sale at the Rensselaer postoffice beginning about May Ist. There will be three classes of the books, One will contain twelve two-cent stamps, to sell for a quarter; the second will contain twenty-four two-cent stamps, to sell for 49 cents; the third will contain forty-eight two-cent stamps, to sell for 97 cents. Each page of one of the books six stamps, and there will be interleaves of parafined paper to prevent adhesion. The, extra cent above the value of the stamps is to pay the cost of binding.