The Pascoag Herald

RHODE ISLAND POLITICS.
A Few Reasons Why the Republican Will Win This Year.

The State of Rhode Island is bringing to a close a political campaign which involves the selection of three congressmen and State officers on November 3rd. In the meantime the state is invaded with many speakers of all political parties seeking votes for their respective candidates. Noon and night these speakers explain the problems of the city, State and Nation, and the local papers are giving extensive news reports of these doings. The net result of this campaign to date makes it look as though the REPUBLICAN State Officers headed by a new candidate, R. Livingston Beeckman of Newport, for Governor will be elected. Two years ago Hon. Aram J. Pothier of Woonsocket was re-elected Governor on the Republican ticket despite the Democratic landslide in the country. The new nominee, Mr. Beeckman, is a man with wide experience in State affairs, having served in the House and Senate as a member from Newport for the past six years. He is a close student of public affairs, and is deeply interested in the legislation that most affects the workingmen. His home is in Newport where he has spent the greater part of his life.

The candidate for Lieutenant Governor on the Republican ticket is Emery J. San Souci of Providence, a business man who has risen from small beginnings to a prominent place in the community. A few years ago he worked as back boy in the Biddelford cotton mill, and later he learned the boot and shoe business, both wholesale and retail. He is now engaged in shoe and dry goods business at Olneyville Square as a member of the firm of J. O. San Souci Company.

The other State officers are the faithful and efficient men who have served with eminent success and to the satisfaction of all for several years past, viz: J. Fred Parker for Secretary of State; Herbert A. Rice for Attorney General; Walter A. Read for General Treasurer.

Even more interest is being expressed in the fight for members of Congress from the three Rhode Island districts. In the first district Roswell B. Burchard is the Republican candidate. He is the present Lieutenant Governor and has had long experience in public affairs. He was for six years Speaker of the House of Representatives and is well known as an orator and public speaker. He is one of the most active campaigners now on the stump in Rhode Island, and is making his Democratic opponent go some to keep up with him in discussing the national issues of the campaign.

Hon. Walter R. Stiness is the Republican candidate in the second congressional district. He has been the United States District Attorney for Rhode Island and is a lawyer of high standing. A few years since he was the Senate Leader at the State House, being at that time a senator from Warwick. He is a forceful speaker, and is giving his chief opponent something to think about besides garden seeds and franked letters.

In the third congressional district the present congressman, Hon. Ambrose Kennedy, is seeking re-election and his prospects are unusually bright. He is delivering a series of very able addresses on topics of the hour in Congress, and his position at Washington and knowledge of the general situation makes him specially valuable at this time in campaign work.

The progressive vote in Rhode Island is dwindling away from present appearances. There were but two branches of the Progressives in evidence a few days ago, but the Supreme Court decided in favor of one and against the other, and the whole party seems rather dead as a natural outcome.

The opinion seems to prevail in party councils that the Republicans will regain the second congressional district, which means the election of General W. R. Stiness, and that Mr. Burchard will pull through by a small margin in the first congressional district.

The election of three congressmen will be a good object lesson to the Washington democrats who have been passing legislation most detrimental to New England industries.

It is anticipated that the independent vote will largely come back to the Republican party because of poor business conditions, and the enforced idleness of ten thousand operatives in Rhode Island shops as an outcome of the tariff-changes and other hostile democratic legislation.

The Republicans expect a clean sweep with such able congressional nominees, and such men as Mr. Beeckman and Mr. San Souci at the head of the State ticket.

The Democratic party in 1912 promised, if elected, to bring about a radical reduction in the cost of table necessities. Sixteen months after coming into power, namely on July 1, 1914, and before the price of table necessities was affected by the war in Europe, instead of finding a reduction the opposite is found to be true.

Thirty-four articles of food in common use, the prices having been obtained from 74 prominent Rhode Island stores, show an average increase in prices, which, coupled with reductions in pay rolls and the great number of unemployed, present a gloomy picture compared with the good times promised by the Democratic party in 1912.

An investigation of the manufacturing plants in Rhode Island showed that on July 1, 1913 there were 93,072 wage earners in slightly over fifty per cent of the establishments, drawing weekly wages amounting to $1,115,865.07.

On July 1, 1914, these same establishments employed but 84,910 persons, who were paid weekly wages amounting to $998,828.13, a decrease of 8,162 workers and a decrease in the pay roll of $117,036.94 per week.

These same figures indicate a yearly decrease in the pay roll for 1160 establishments in Rhode Island from which reports were received of $6,085,920.84, an amount which represents the weekly wages of nearly ten thousand families.

These figures were taken before the European war was ever thought of, and consequently are not affected thereby.

There are approximately 132,000 wage earners in normal times in the manufacturing plants in Rhode Island, and if the per cent. of decrease which holds good in 75 per cent. of all wage earners of the state, in both number employed and wages should be applied to the entire number normally employed, it would show a loss to the wage earners of approximately $9,000,000 per year.

These figures simply represent the manufacturing establishments of the state; but any great loss to the wage earners in our manufactures is felt all along the line in practically every industry, for the wage earners in the factories of Rhode Island earn the money which is spent in the shops and stores of the state.

With these conditions existing it will not be strange if the districts of Rhode Island return three Republican congressmen and elect a Republican state ticket.

In fact that is what the politicians foresee and expect, and it looks as though the voters are beginning to see it also.