Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 35, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 December 1902 — Will Create a General Fund. [ARTICLE]

Will Create a General Fund.

On Jan. Ist another pajment on the State debt will be made, in the amount of $200,000. AuditorJHart announces that with in 4 years the debt will be wiped out and there is no doubt bis prediction will be fulfilled, provided the present administration is continued in power that length of time. The Republican party has accomplished great results in Indiana since it took charge of affairs m 1895.

The Inter Ocean is -throwing a new fit every day now over the Venezuela matter, and the fits increase in er verity as they multiply in number. And especially doea Secretary Hay come in for any amount of condemnation in the Inter Ocean 4 * editorials. It ia very strange the* Inter Gse&n editor knows *»> vastly more about diplomacy, national honor, the intentions of England and Germany, the government and methods of than President Castro, not only Secretary Hay and President Roosevelt, but also than practically all other newspaper editors in the country. There are several things wrong with the Inter Ooean. All through McKinley's administration it oheriahed a bitter and very thinly veiled hostility towards him and his cabinet, and now that same hostility is shown against the Roosevelt administration. Another trouble with It is that it has

a chronic case of what is called jirgoism, in an aggravated form This leads it to take an extreme and unreasonable stand against every other country which the United States has anything approaching to a controversy with. This tendency of the Inter Ocean’s was especially manifested in 1895 when Cleveland sprung his sensational Venezuela message. If the Inter Ocean could have had it way then, this nation would have been plunged into a war with Great Britain. This same policy of fake and inflamatory patriotism has characterized that paper ever since then, as it also did long before. It probably is adopted mainly as a matter of business policy, for there is always a large element of the population which approves of that kind of newspaper pyrotechnics, and shows its approval by buying the paper that indulges in it. But it is far removed indeed from real patriotism, or honest and honorable journalism.

It is said that the proposed bill in behalf of county officers which will be presented to the legislature in January will ask that all the fees from county offices be dumped into one general fund, and out of which the county officers are to be paid, thus insuring the salaries of all of them