Independent Statesman

Independent Statesman
Thursday, August 16, 1888.

Republican Nominations.

For President,
Benjamin Harrison
of Indiana.

For Vice President,
Levi P. Morton,
of New York.

New York harbor dredged by a British contractor with his old unseaworthy British steamer, and flying British colors while improving an American harbor, shows the present administration to be "Quite English you know."

Nearly a month has elapsed since the New York Tribune published its expose of the rascals turned into office by President Cleveland, and not a whimper of dissent has been heard from the Democratic press as to its truthfulness. That record, startling and damning as it was, stands confessed by the administration.

The Washington Post, for three years the personal organ of President Cleveland, tells the truth when it declares that the Democratic party "by its history, its tradition, its declaration of principles, its hopes and its aspirations is unalterably and implacably hostile to the doctrine of protection." The Democrat who denies this don't know the history of his party.

The Lowell Courier remarks: "There is nothing like Democratic reform in an administration that is saturated with the article. The Southern postmasters, who have come into being with Clevelandism and Mugwumpism, contend that it is no part of their duty to distribute through the United States mails the speeches of Republican congressmen. Public office seems to be a Democratic trust."

The Pall Mall Gazette of London exults over the passage of the Mills bill by the House as follows: "There can be no doubt, as the chairman of the Cobden Club said at the annual meeting, that the American reaction in the direction of free-trade will have a great effect throughout the world. Protection has had a little new life infused into it, thanks to Prince Bismarck's patronage, but it is once more beginning to look sickly, and even in this country the fair traders, in spite of effort, money and plausibility, are visibly discouraged."

Mr. Blaine corroborated the experience of every observing American who has visited Europe, when in his speech to the workingmen who serenaded him in New York Friday evening, he said: "I say without fear of contradiction, in no country of Europe, in no part of Europe, or part of any country is the condition of labor comparable to that which it holds in the United States. Are you willing to give up that position, or are you willing to sustain it? You can maintain it by a strong pull, a long pull, and pull altogether for Harrison and Morton."

Zachary Taylor, Republican candidate for sheriff of Shelby county, Tennessee, declares that he was counted out by Democratic frauds in the recent election, and he has good reason for so declaring. In 1884 there were 16,654 votes cast for governor in that county, of which 9,277 were Republican votes. In 1886 there were 7,009 Democratic votes counted and only 3,503 Republican votes. A pertinent inquiry is, that with the nearly full strength of the Democratic party cast in 1886, what has become of the 1,903 Republican majority of 1884?

Rev. Dr. Brooks, the third party Prohibition candidate for vice-president, who boasts that he has been a rebel, a slave-holder, and a fire-eating Democrat, and thanks God that he has "not the sin of Republicanism to answer for," makes this invisible point between the Prohibitionist and Republican propositions to abolish the whiskey tax: "The one would repeal the tax the sooner to destroy the traffic. The other would overflow the country with free whiskey rather than injure the already subsidized interests of the country." How the abolition of the tax means destruction of the liquor traffic in one case and free whiskey in the other, Dr. Brooks does not and cannot explain.

There was vim and vigor in the address of Murat Halstead to Mr. Blaine, on board the steamer Laura M. Starin, in New York harbor, made in behalf of the Young Men's Blaine Club of Cincinnati. Its conclusion was: "We congratulate ourselves that there is spared for us, and returned to us, the master mind that in December last hurled back upon the leader of the Democracy, the gratuitously advanced heresy of freetrade and ruin. You come, sir, to blaze the way for a new triumphal march of the Republican party and the people. The Young Men's Blaine Club of Cincinnati, the first and strongest of its name, whose motto is vim vigor and victory, welcomes you home."

It is worth while to remember that the Democratic organs which have been exulting over the circumstances that the Indianapolis Appeal, the organ of the union printers, was opposing General Harrison prudently refrain from noticing that the union has condemned the course of its paper, and ordered the Democratic campaign department to be immediately discontinued. Also that the little coterie of labor agitators at Indianapolis who, under the name of the State Federation of Labor, have declared their opposition to the Republican platform and candidates, are manipulated by two Democratic politicians, named Gould and Gruelle, who are in the pay of the Democratic State Committee. The real attitude of Indiana workingmen is expressed by the large and enthusiastic delegations of their representatives who have visited Gen. Harrison.