Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 35, Number 124, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 October 1903 — AN UNBELIEVABLE TRANSFORMATION. [ARTICLE]

AN UNBELIEVABLE TRANSFORMATION.

The Louisville Courier-Journal Is a staunch Democratic papery hut (the calamity editor evidently did not famish this comment on Republican times in the United States: "The legitimate business situation has not bad a backset anywhere, while Europe has been waiting with bated breath for a repetition of the hard times of 1893. These hard times seem still far off, for wg have weathered apparently what is the worst of a serious monetary famine, without a distressing accumulation of business failures, as must have been the case Were not conditions intrinsically ■onndL" The New York Commercial describes the happy situation of the wage-earner. When the picture is hung by the side of the vision which arises whenever the conditions pro vailing only six years ago are recalled, the contrast is so sharp as to be almost unbelievable. The Commercial says:

"It is said that of the 260,000 men in Chicago enrolled in the ranks of union laboi none is idle except an inconsiderab a few who are either on strike or sick. Nobody out there recalls a time when like conditions prevailed. And from all the populous centers of the country come similar reports of the employment of labor up to the limit of the supply, and in not a few instances there are demands for labor that cannot he filled at all. “In all the farming and manufacture Ing sectioj’.s the same story is told — actually more work than workera. Harvest hands have been at a premium in the West and South. And the approach of winter both in town and country is apparently divested of the dread that it has ordinarily held out to many thousands of bread-winners. Savings banks deposits are increasing almost everywhere in the country, and the organization of industries goes steadily on, though not in such numbers and in such tremendous volume as was the case a year or two ago.” The Indianapolis News states that the railroads of the country have spent this year for improvements and betterments $400,000,000, last year $300,000,000 and $200,000,000 the year before. Of the billion dollars and more expended by American railroads since the McKinley revival of proa perity, fully three-fourths went into the pockets of the wage-earner. It i« stated that the railroads have spent and contracted to sp§nd in Indiana thus far this yetr between - $25,000,000 and $50,0',0,000. At all important points It has been necessary to increase yard facilities in order to accommodate an unprecedented and steadily increasing volume of business. The surprising thing is not that Republican victory was the regular order at this year’s elections, but that so many well-meaning people went to the polls and voted for a return to the guidance of the political leadership which holds up to the country as the total fruitage of its efforts in national administration during the past forty years the conditions of 1893 to 1896. f