Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 October 1908 — Hoke Smith and the Veterans. [ARTICLE]

Hoke Smith and the Veterans.

Hoke Smith, of Georgia, is now making speeches in Indiana telling Hoosiers to vote for Bryan and Kein. The soldiers will hardly follow his advice. He was the official headsmen of the latest democratic administration, who made a specialty of cutting off pensions for union veterans. The National Tribune says be secured a social appropriation of $500,000 , a year for “the purpose of covering th® country with Secret Service men, who went into every community to gather up the malicious neighborhood gos.ip about every veteran’s character, his ability to work, his personal habits and so on, to secure evidence to deny him a pension. They even assailed | the character of the poor old widows, and the pension office files today hold a repulsive lot of calumnies, gleaned . from vile neighborhood gossip, assail-1 ing the personal character of the | women who had been true and faith- | ful wives to veterans, had nursed their soldier husbands during their mortal illnesses and were now striving to raise the families which had been left them.” 1 I The Tribune rfays the election of Bryan* would install the same controlling elements in power which came in with Cleveland, and in the light of 1 experience it urges the veterans to I v?te against any such a possibility. |