Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 38, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 January 1906 — About the Blanket Remonstrance Appeal [ARTICLE]

About the Blanket Remonstrance Appeal

It is asserted that the Saloonkeepers will appeal from the decision of the Commissioners, in the blanket remonstrance matter, and on the same ground they urged before the Commissioners, namely that there was a “conspiracy’’ among the voters of the First ward to keep the vote small in that ward with the more or less, mostly less, felonious intent to make it dead easy to knock out the saloons in that ward. It is even claimed that not only voters stayed away-Jeom-the polls entirely, and clearly with premeditation and prepense of malice, bnt divers and sundry of them who did go to the polls, did then and there, wantonly an mail ciously deface their ballots, so that they had to be thrown ont and not counted. And some of them added insult to injury,by making monkeys on their ballots, thus beyond doubt indicating their intention of making monkeys of the saloon-keepers, also.

Be all these thingsjas they may, it is hard to Bee why it is any greater sin or more flagrant conspiracy, for anti-saloon people to work and scheme to keep the vote down, than it is for the saloon-keepers and their friends to work and scheme to keep the vote up. And if any body worked harder at the recent election t than the saloonists did they had to hustle for all there was in them. The unfamiliar spectacle of Democrats hauling Republicans to the polls was often seen that day, yea and vica-versa also. It was not a case of caring who they voted for, just so they voted for somebody. And it can be set down as a fact beyond peradventure, that many of these people whom the saloonists hauled to the polls, were the very ones who made m onkeys of their ballots, and of the fellows who hauled them there, at the same time. And, by the way, does not that make the saloonists particeps criminis in the conspiracy against themselves? It is a great case these appellants will have, truly. The demand of certain people over in Newton county to have the half built court house torn down and removed, lest a brick should fall at an inopportune moment and crack one of their coacoanuts, was was not a patching to this for logic. And, now that this matter of keeping up or down the vote is under discussion, it will be in order to call attention to the fact that the returns from the other wards show that there was pretty nearly as large a falling off in thpse wards as in the first ward, which faet may be considered as pretty conclusive proof, either that the alleged con spiracy to keep the vote down did not meet with much success, or that the counter conspiracy to keep the vote up was about equally effective. Thns, as ompared with the vote of May 1904, the vote of the First ward fell off at the ’ recent election, 49 votes, or 26 per cent As the same time the vote of the Third ward fell off 38 votes, or 20 per cent, and that of the Second ward fell off 20 votes, or IS per cent. Not such a very ence, after ail especially ai compared with the Third ward.