Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 36, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 January 1904 — EDITORIAL COMMENT. [ARTICLE]

EDITORIAL COMMENT.

A few weeks ago we were told that the o< uutry was trembling upon the brink of a financial and ludu-tnal crisis. But the country has quit trembling and someone has removed the bank. It takes something more than a few slarmists crying ‘ fire” to start a commercial panic in such times as these. Mayor Harrisoodic n’t take any ohauc-s on a grand jury indictment, on account of the coroner’s jury 1 fi *dir>g in the Iroquois theater fire I He took the case before Judge Tut,hill, on habeas corpus proceed-1 ings and the Judge spent tnree hours, or is alleged to, in reading evidence that it trok three weeks to gather, and decided vehemently that the wide-open Mavor was in 1 no way responsible. In point of law probably the judge is rivbt ( The tremendous enterprises of' the Pennsylvania railroad are mak-< log havoc of our seaboard cities. Washington is torn up about as oadly as New York, A large part of itl, oks liked a wrecked mine,' or if a cyclone had struck it after being prospected for oil. Where the new U<>iou station is to stand more than 500 buildings have been 'orn down, and cutting, filling carting and blasting are going on j -even days in a week and almost all hours of the dav and night |i On these ruins a $7 000 000 trans- i po tation palace is at once to be erected,

A bill known as the “Brownlow bill” has been introduced in con-., gress which provides for the ap- 1 propriation of $24,000,000 to bel ►pent in repairing the roads of the j 1 United States. This amount is nvided am >ng the states and each state must add to its share a inm , equal to amount received, thus making $48,000,000 to be spent on 1 mads. This is a timely m >ve and 1 one which will benefit more peo- 1 pie than almost any other. Under he provision of that bill Indiana . ▼ >uld receive $730,000. which, when the state doubles it, will • mount to $1.460000 However, the bill ie not yet passed. The Hon. M. E. Ingalls, presi dent ot the Big Four railway system, has made a speech in which

tie intimates that business is para Ij zed and labor is unemployed. I' anyone is disposed to take Mr. Ingalls seriously, let him try to 1 oaie a few Big Four box oars with nothing to do or tempt a hrakeman i ff of one of Mr. Ingalls' freight trains with an invitation t> join the kind of military maneuvers ihe Cxeys and the Kelleys were conducting during the only period of disenthrHllmentfrom the galling thraldom of tariff taxation thia country has enjoyed during the lifetime of this generation. The gentlemen who are running the Democratic party in Indiana will permit Mr. Bryan to mate speeches in Huosierdom hereafter, and they will allow bis followers

to support the Democratic state and national tickets at the polls, providing they do this decently and in order, bat the sixteen-to-oners will have no more to’do with controlling the party hereafter than a locomotive fireman has with handling the throttle of bis engine, The re-orgnnizers are in the saddle, the party machinery is theirs, and Mr. Thomas Taggart, the urbane and astute dispenser of politics and Pluto‘water, who was denounced by Mr. Bryan two years ago for burning incense -at the Cleveland shrine, will see to it that the long-haired and loudlunged gentlemen who were foolish enough to believe in the last two national platforms of the Democratic party, are permitted to make a generous contribution of silence to the campaign of 1904.