The Helena Independent

Secretary Peck's report of the increase in wages in New York is mighty poor campaign material. He asks the protected manufacturers for figures which they make out and mail to him. Of course these bloated monopolists are not going to do anything to remove the high wall tariff that has built up fortunes for them stolen from the producers of the country. They therefore send figures adapted to their purposes.

The situation is very much like a tax gatherer asking the average owner for the correct value of his taxable property.

"Grover Cleveland is very friendly before election, but once seated in the Presidential chair he would fall back into his old ways of thinking and resume his former habit of lying awake all night to devise a reason for vetoing a pension bill which should give some decrepit veteran the munificent allowance of $8 a month out of the national treasury," says the San Francisco Chronicle. This is a very fair sample of republican argument. By consulting the figures the Chronicle will find that Grover Cleveland signed more pension bills than any republican president, including President Harrison.