THE CLAIMS OF A DEMAGOGUE

The Cortland Democrat, Friday, October 10, 1890.

PAGE FOUR/EDITORIALS.

   While Peck is about the country telling farmers what great things he has done for them in the Assembly, would it not be well enough for him to explain to them why he went to Canada when the war broke out and remained there until after peace was declared!

   Farmers who are in favor of more protection for the manufacturers and higher prices for the necessaries of life will vote for Peck, who is in favor of piling on the tariff. Those who believe in tariff reform will vote against him. You pay your money and take your choice.

   The present Republican Congress has created over 1,200 new offices, at an annual cost for salaries of $1,200,000, besides electing a dozen Republican Congressmen, who could not be elected at home and Mr. Belden says he is proud to be "a Representative in a Congress which has accomplished so much for the welfare and prosperity of the country."

   The Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, headed by Hon. J. J. Belden, is said to have agreed to distribute pap on this basis: It will duplicate the funds that any candidate will raise at home, provided that sum reaches $5,000 and does not exceed $15,000. Thus, if a candidate will agree to put in $10,000 from his own pocket, the Committee will give him $10,000 more with which to buy votes. The new ballot law will in large degree frustrate the plans of the vote-buyers in this State, but in other States, where there is still free swing of swag, money is likely to tell unless the Democrats display unusual vigilance.—Syracuse Courier.

   The McKinley bill has become a law and went into effect last Monday. It has already caused a rise in the price of the necessaries of life without raising the price of labor or the price of farm products. The words "and the farmer and the laborer pays the freight," should have been added to the McKinley bill before its passage. The sentence would have described the intention of the framers of the bill as well as its actual results. In order to be able to "fry the fat" out of the manufacturers, Republican Congressmen were obliged to give them an opportunity to make greater profits and that is just what they have done.

   Mr. John DeWitt Warner, the well known New York lawyer, tersely sums up the effect of the McKinley bill, now a law, by entitling it: ''An act to reduce the wages of all wage-earners in the United States, and to reduce the demand for labor, and for other similar purposes." That's just the size of it.

   At the annual meeting of the Cortland County Veteran's Association held 
at the Floral Trout Park in this place a few weeks since, Hon. R. T. Peck, who was doing a little missionary work for himself, was called upon for a speech and as that was what he was there for, he of course responded. In his speech, he assured the boys that "the one great regret of his life was that he was not one of them, but that he would have been had he been old enough."

   Now let us see about it. Mr. Peck is to our certain knowledge several years older than the editor of the DEMOCRAT, and the latter was old enough to be drafted into the United States service in July 1863. We beg leave to suggest that if Mr. Peck had not been "viewing the battle from far off Canada, he would have found that he was old enough to enlist or take his chances in the draft. It takes a much smarter man than Peck to play the demagogue for any great length of time successfully.

 

THE CLAIMS OF A DEMAGOGUE.

   Editor Democrat.—The Republican candidate for Member of Assembly is just now overburdened with solicitude for the farmers. He is entirely content that the farmers should pay a high tariff on binding twine, but is sorrowful over the fact that the people of this state owning a great waterway, keeps it in repair. The Erie canal was built many years ago, and in the opinion of leading men of both parties has been of incalculable value in affording cheap transportation for all kinds of merchandise, and employment for a large number of men. It is in direct competition with the railroads and compels them to carry goods much cheaper than they would if such competition could be avoided.

   When a candidate for member of Assembly has a free pass over railroads for himself, and his pockets full of passes to give his friends, he may well be expected to overlook the exactions of these great corporations when they trample upon the rights of the people of this state. That Mr. Peck has such a pass for himself and that he has distributed such passes to his friends, he dare not deny. In one town where Mr. Peck was recently endeavoring to obtain the delegates, five out of the six delegates named on his ticket had been given free passes to and from Albany.

   The railroads in form give free passes, but every sensible man understands that they expect to get full value for them whenever their interests are involved. In other words, they are buying instead of giving.

   The names of those who have received the passes are numerous, and quite a number can readily be named and their P. O. address given.

   If passes were as freely given by the canal authorities, and such passes were as convenient for use, Mr. Peck's expressions and opinions would doubtless be modified.

   Mr. Peck, why not frankly say that the railroads are waging war against the state's great waterway, and while you are accorded their passes you will at all times stand by them?

   The canals will close long before the next legislature convenes, and will again open in the spring in time for the slowest packet to reach Albany before the people of Cortland county will again elect you Member.

   Mr. Peck knows that the talk about having the National government take charge of the canals, because they furnish an outlet for the products of the great west, is the simplest nonsense and could only emanate from a shameless demagogue.

   It takes two to make a bargain. When has the National government suggested that they wished to buy? If they wished to make the purchase, where is their constitutional authority to do so?

   Mr. Peck claims credit for the school bill, and no doubt he did all he could to secure its passage. It emanated from a body of school commissioners, and primarily the credit belongs to them. Under Mr. Peck's management the bill secured fifty-seven votes, when sixty-five votes were required, and so far as Mr. Peck was concerned the bill died on his hands. Later, abler and more experienced men interested themselves in, spoke in favor of and secured its passage, and now Mr. Peck has the sublime hardihood and effrontery to claim the honor.

   Mr. Peck would have the taxpayers understand that the additional $25 to each school district was a free gift from the state. That he knows is not true, but he vainly hopes it may deceive others.

   The state does not give away money. Whatever money the state distributes is raised in the state through some system of taxation. If any person is in doubt on this subject, the tax gatherer will sooner or later dispel it.

   Thus far in the canvass Mr. Peck has omitted to speak of his record from April 1861 to April 1865, but it is understood he reserves his war record for the last two weeks of the canvass.
   By the way, where was Mr. Peck during the four years above mentioned?

   INQUIRER.

Nellie Bly

Nellie Bly as a Story Writer.

   Nellie Bly is in clover. For the next three years she will write under contract for Norman L. Munro, publisher of The Family Story Paper at a salary of about $12,000 per annum. Miss Bly's extraordinary tour around the world, coupled with her original and popular career as an all-around writer for the press, presages for her a bright and profitable future. Mr. N. L. Munro has again showed his skill as an editor of high merit in selecting a writer so thoroughly equipped to please the readers of The Family Story Paper. There has been a substantial increase in the circulation of The Family Story Paper since Miss Bly's work began.—The Newsman, Sept., 1890.