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JUBLIC OPINION

A WEEKLY JOURNAL

Thursday, 20 October, 1898

Volume XXV, Number 16

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Reports received in Washington by the congressional committees are said to indicate a very passive interest in the coming elections throughout the country. The average political meeting is not well attended and enthusiasm among the voters is not vociferous. Such a condition is usually not favorable to the party in power after two years of administration. And the latest election figures fail to show any drift toward Republican candidates. The Democrats hope to gain control of the next house, and it must be conceded that they have a fair prospect of accomplishing their end. Republican chances daily diminish in Pennsylvania, where Quay is now on trial for conspiracy in bank wrecking, while the recombination of gold and silver Democrats in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut promises to add a few members to the Democratic side in congress. The managers of the Democracy profess to anticipate a gain of twelve or fourteen in the east and a number in Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan. Republican congressmen from the south this year can not be looked for since, even in

Maryland, the Democratic factions are united on a compromise money platform. If the next house is Democratic, however, the Democratic majority will have to be large to enable the party to menace the country with silver legislation. The eastern Democrats will embrace a number of sound money men who would be likely to vote with the Republicans on this issue. Republican prospects in the senate now seem brighter than they are at the other end of the capitol. The Democrats have already lost a senator from Maryland in Gorman's retirement, and they seem sure to lose one from Wisconsin. The Republicans are confident of electing senators from North Dakota and Delaware, but are less sanguine about choosing Murphy's successor from New York, while in Indiana they are expecting no victory over Turpie, who will probably succeed himself. The Democrats expect to hold their seat from California, and to gain members from Washington, Montana, and Wyoming. But conceding Democratic gains in these three mining and Pacific states, losses in Wisconsin, New Jersey, Delaware, and North Dakota would, with Maryland, throw them into a minority. The Republicans would then have forty-seven votes, or a majority of the senate, including the Republican already assured from Oregon, and in this estimate New York, Indiana, West Virginia, and California are given to the opposition.

Providence (R. I.) Journal (Ind.)

Hardly any congress of recent years has had so much important business to do as will the body about to be chosen, and the necessity of exercising great care in the choice between candidates is correspondingly increased. In the first place, it is quite probable that the currency question will be settled for some years to come by the congressmen who are to be chosen next month. Of course there are those who think that this matter may be disposed of by the present congress during the coming winter; but they must be classed as optimists, and it is not likely, on the whole, that their expectations will be realized. The coming session will be pretty well taken up with the especially urgent business entailed by the late war-the conclusion of peace, the regulation of revenue, and the provision of means for the immediate management of our new possessions; and as there is likely to be no immediate danger that the currency conditions will become worse in the next twelvemonth this subject will probably be passed over. But it will almost certainly have to be taken up by the next congress; and it is generally supposed that that congress will hold its first session next spring instead of next fall. The free silver movement is quiescent just now; we should put an end to it forever while we can. There are other reasons, also, why special importance attaches to the coming congressional election. Notwithstanding all that the present congress may do toward settling the questions raised by the late war, there is sure to be a great deal of difficult constructive work left over for the next congress to undertake. New legislation will certainly be required to adjust the nation to its new international relations. There will be legislation relating to the new dependencies directly and new enactments for colonial administration at home. All this work can not be completed during the coming winter, especially as it may not be till late in the session that the exact status of affairs under the treaty of peace will be known. So difficult a task has not been set before any congress for years. It is absolutely essential that men be elected who will be able to rise to the magnitude of the requirements. We can not afford to view the coming contest with either apathy or indifference.

Washington (D. C.) Post (Ind.)

While Democratic gains are outlined in many states, the figures given by the correspondents of the Post do not yet make it positive that the Republicans will lose control of the house. There is at present in the house of representatives a Republican majority of fifty-six over all parties combined and this large majority will be difficult to completely overcome. There is no doubt that it will be reduced to a very small number, but the present indications do not point to its disappearance. The estimates made by the Post correspondents show that one hundred and sixty-six districts in the United States will certainly be Republican in the approaching election-unless the unexpected happens--and thirteen additional districts will give the Republicans a majority in the house. According to the Post's advices, there are no less than forty-two doubtful districts, the large number being in great measure due to the caution of the Post's correspondents in declining to place in the certain column any district which contains an element of doubt. Out of this forty-two, however, there are at least twenty districts in which the chances are said to favor the Republicans. For instance, there are districts in Massachusetts, Maryland, Delaware, New York, West Virginia, Ohio, Michigan, and Wyoming which are classed as doubtful, but which the Republicans will probably carry. With one hundred and sixty-six districts assigned with certainty to the Republicans, as against one hundred and twenty-eight assigned to the Democrats, the party in power has an easier path to travel to the desired goal. The Populists are given thirteen seats and the silver Republicans four. All the correspondents of the Post agree in their statements as to the apathy shown everywhere in the coming elections and that this lack of interest is the one great obstacle to Republican success. All efforts are now being made to get out the vote and the campaign is undoubtedly becoming enlivened. The Democrats are encouraged by their fighting chance and the Republicans, appreciating the danger that threatens, are vigorously laboring to impress upon their voters the necessity of casting every ballot at the polls.

New York Sun (Rep.)

If there is any doubt about the Republicans retaining the control in the next house of representatives it is due solely to anxiety lest in some of the states where the Republican party is easily dominant the voters are not yet waked up to a consciousness of the momentous importance of the coming election. If the Republicans turn out at the election in full force there will be no question of their having a large majority in the house and a majority in the senate which will enable the administration to carry through unobstructed its policy, so essential to the prosperity of the country and its rightful increase in power and in the consideration of the world. Every congress district which now has Republican representation, or in which there is a possibility of gaining a seat from the Democrats and their ruinous policy, should be a hive of Republican industry from this time forth. No Republican vote should be lost. All the advocates of a sound currency as essential to our prosperity should feel the overwhelming obligation that lies on them to come forward and defend it. The prosperity of this country is involved. The growth and enrichment of our national power and commerce, which victory in war offers us as its prize, can not be secured in their fullness except by the election of a Republican congress next month, and every patriotic citizen should rush to improve the privilege of contributing by his vote to such a result.

Baltimore News (Dem.)

The practical effect of the control of the next house by the Democratic party would be, in almost all ways, the same as though every Democratic nominee were committed to the freesilver doctrine. Of course, a free-silver bill has not the ghost of a chance of being enacted into law during the administration of President McKinley; the effect of the house being Democratic would be not to threaten the country with the immediate danger of free silver, but to prevent the enactment of legislation designed to settle the money question permanently, to give lodgment for measures of various shades of "friendliness to silver, and to keep alive the danger of another such contest in 1900 as we went through in 1896-in other words, a contest in which the national currency and the national credit would be vitally involved, and all the great interests of the country would again be clouded with uncertainty. The way to avoid this is to have a Republican majority in house and senate, and then, under the encouragement thus obtained, and

under the stimulus of public opinion, to secure a thoroughgoing financial measure which would place the currency practically beyond the reach of attack. Is anybody so simple as to imagine that this result can possibly be brought about with a Democratic majority in the house?

Baltimore Sun (Dem.)

A Democratic majority in the house might spoil President McKinley's program. It might even go to the length of disapproving the entire policy of expansion, thus nipping the imperial idea in the bud. The reorganization of the army on a larger scale, the enlargement of the navy, and the reform of the currency are other matters to be dealt with. Each bristles with difficulties that would be utilized by a hostile house to paralyze the president, to say nothing of the tariff, civil service, shipping and money questions raised by the acquisition of Porto Rico and Hawaii. It is, accordingly, very important for the realization of the program already sketched out by Republican leaders that they should retain control of the house. Had they kept their promises of sound-money legislationmade in 1896-their success at the polls in 1898 would be more nearly certain than it is.

Philadelphia Press (Rep.)

It is in congress that support for the McKinley administration will count and mean something. A net change of less than thirty districts in the entire United States from Republican to Democratic would put the next house in opposition to the administration. Whatever Republican disaffection there is should not be manifested in the election of congressmen. It is not a question for factional consideration, but of public duty. The best indorsement of the McKinley administration will be in the election of a delegation as nearly unanimous as the present one. It would count more than all the rest.

The Indian Trouble in Minnesota

The commissioner of the bureau of Indian affairs has made the following statement relative to the recent trouble with a small band of Chippewa Indians near Leech Lake, Minnesota:

Of late they have had a grievance, and this has led up to the present outbreak. It was determined to move the Indians from their present quarters to lands inside the White Earth reservation. The latter lands are superior to those owned by the Indians, but the traditions are strong with them, and they hold with tenacity to their old lands and associations. They insisted also, and with some degree of reason, that they ought to be paid for the improvements on their lands. This was recognized as just, and a bill appropriating $35,000 to pay for these improvements was presented at the last congress and urged as an amendment to an appropriation bill. But it was ruled out and defeated, so that the Indians have received nothing for their improvements. Now, as the removal is about to he carried out, some of the old chiefs refused to leave their old lands. How far this has gone we do not know from official reports, but we gather from unofficial quarters that the local officers began arresting some of the old chiefs who refused to move, and that brought on the ill feeling, threats, and a clash. Minneapolis (Minn.) Journal

The present Indian troubles are, as nearly all the Indian troubles in this country have been the result of our reservation system. The late distinguished pioneer, Henry H. Sibley, who understood from personal experience the Indian question in all its bearings, when representing Minnesota territory in congress in 1850, most earnestly sought to secure a change of the Indian policy. In his speech of August 2, 1850, he drew a vivid picture of the injustices of the government which had engendered retaliation by the Indians and he charged that every Indian war, since the country had an existence, was chargeable to the injustice of the government. He strongly advocated as a remedy the immediate abandonment of the reservation system; the extension of the United States laws over the aboriginal tribes and the gift of separate property, personal and individual possession of the land, placed beyond the power of alienation, so as to break up tribal relations; the endowment of the Indians with civil rights; the establishment of manual labor schools among them. These are the chief points of Sibley's plan, some of which the government has tardily adopted. Sibley was no visionary or dreamer. He was a thoroughly practical man, and few men have as full knowledge as he of the Indian question. There would not

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Because western people do not like Indians, and cherish the feeling that the only good Indian is a dead Indian, there is a proreness to excuse every act of injustice or bad faith toward a red man as if it were not more blameworthy than a broken promise to a cow or a thoughtless blow to an ox. But the nation's honor is involved. Every act of bad faith by one of its official representatives casts dishonor upon the nation, and should be resented by it as keenly and punished as swiftly as an honorable nan would resent a personal insult. The statements in this case may be erroneous, but a searching investigation should be made, not of the sort sometimes contrived for the whitewashing of officials when the person injured is a red man or a black man. The color of the victim is of no consequence. The question is whether a government official is a white man. It is the honor of the United States that is at stake in this matter, as in every other affecting the treatment of subjects of the government, and the peace of the nation is also at stake, for it can be preserved only by good faith and fair dealing toward all who have anything to do with it.

New York Press

The investigation which must follow this incident is pretty sure to show that the Chippewas have been misused in precisely the same manner as defenseless foreigners are misused in any big city; just as Chinamen's laundry windows are broken and Greek peddlers' apple carts upturned. The temper of the governor of Minnesota presents perhaps competent evidence on this point already. The incident, even if it has cost the lives of a gallant officer and six brave privates, will be valuable if it brings home conclusively to the American mind the fact that almost the only possible instigators of "Indian troubles" to-day are land thieves, cowboy sheriffs," and political appointees of the Indian bureau of the interior department. The murders of Indians at Jackson's Hole and on the Colorado game reservation, and the infamous affairs in Montana and Arizona last year, should have brought this fact home before.

Indianapolis (Ind.) Journal

Minnesota papers have stated that the Indian reservation had been invaded and their pine forests burned and plundered by a disreputable class of whites. The commissioner of Indian affairs admits that they have a grievance and throws the responsibility on congress for failing to appropriate $35,000 to pay their just claims. The striking out of that appropriation was poor economy. The most deplorable feature of the trouble is the loss of life among our brave soldiers. The so-called outbreak" will be easily suppressed and the offending Indians ought to be punished, but the lost lives can not be restored. The regulars are always ready to die in the discharge of duty, but to be shot down by unruly Indians is not a fit death for heroes of Santiago.

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New York Independent

Probably few agencies have suffered more from political appointments than has the White Earth agency. Agents have been changed with every administration, and during a long series of years most of them have been inefficient or worse, have made no attempt to elevate the Indians, or even to break up drinking, gambling, and vice of all kinds; and sometimes they have gone so far as to encourage the wild, demoralizing Indian dances against the express prohibition of the Indian office. Indirectly, the dead soldiers of Minnesota, like many of their fever-stricken comrades of southern camps, may be considered victims of the spoils system.

St. Paul (Minn.) Dispatch

It is time to administer a lesson to these Leech Lake savages. They have been petted and spoiled, and permitted to have their own way about everything until they have come to imagine that the government is afraid of them. They have now given such provocation that harsh measures must be resorted to. England has kept her savage subjects in submission by occasionally administering a castigation, that is sufficiently theatrical to impress them and sufficiently serious to materially reduce their numbers. It looks as though we would

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be compelled to adopt the same policy with our half-savage dependents.

Chicago Record

However the present system of handling Indians may be assailed or defended, there remains the fact that there is positively no assurance that just such outbreaks will not occur with more or less frequency so long as the Indian race remains; and statistics show that the race is so nearly holding its own that extermination will be a matter of very many years. As the superior race has invaded the Indian's land and crowded around him he has been shifted from his tribal home and his territory has become more and more restricted. The process of compression will reach a limit some day, and then the government will be obliged to face squarely the problem which it has evaded in one way or another since the infancy of the republic.

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These wars have not been small affairs. They have been forgotten by the public because they were fought on the frontier and have been in no sense history-making. Yet they have been bloody and have sacrificed thousands of lives. A writer in the English United Service Magazine recently showed that America has spent more than Britain in war with aboriginal races during the last two generations, and our wars were all fought at home. As for the loss of life, Lossing estimates that for every Indian warrior killed in all Indian wars, fifteen American soldiers have lost their lives. It is a terrible price in blood and treasure to pay for foolish administration of our Indian affairs.

The Illinois Riot

October 12 a conflict at Virden, Ill., between striking coal miners and a force of deputies and detectives who were guarding the property of the Chicago-Virden coal company, resulted in the death of nine miners and three deputies. Twenty were wounded. The immediate cause of the outbreak was the arrival of a trainload of Negroes who had been engaged to take the place of the strikers. Governor Tanner, replying to a notification by the mine-operators that their property was in danger and that they were entitled to protection, sent the following dispatch:

Under the present well-known conditions at Virden, if you bring in this imported labor you do so, according to your own messages, with the full knowledge that you will provoke riot and bloodshed. Therefore, you will be morally responsible, if not criminally liable, for what may happen. In my opinion the well matured sentiment of the people of Illinois is largely opposed to the pernicious system of importation of labor, and I am not wedded to any policy which is in opposition to the will of the people of Illinois. Hence, while I do not suppose that you care to listen to a suggestion from me, yet I venture to advise you to abandon the idea of importing labor to operate your mines.

Chicago Chronicle (Dem.)

The men, union or non-union, whom the coal company chooses to employ are entitled to full protection if their lives

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or limbs are menaced by persons whose places they take. They have been guilty of no crime; their necessities doubtless have compelled them to accept what wage a tariff-protected company chooses to give them. There ought not to be any confusion in the popular mind concerning the relative duties of the' company and the state. The state must preserve order. But the state is under no obligation while preserving order to run the business of a private corporation. That business may be conducted as its responsible owners see fit as long as it is done without tumult or disorder or trespass upon the rights of any one else. The government's sole duty in the premises is to preserve order.

Chicago Journal (Ind.)

When Governor Tanner tells the Virden mine-operators they will be morally, if not criminally, responsible for what may happen if they carry out their determination to import Alabama ex-convicts to work Illinois mines, he gives the operators the worst of the argument. If they don't want the riot and bloodshed let Loucks and Lukens abandon their attempt to set up in Illinois the labor standards of the convict camps of Alabama and Georgia. They have no moral right to do that, no matter what their legal rights may be. Any official who, by legal means, opposes their attempt, is acting in the interests of the people of this state, and his services deserve recognition, even though he be John R. Tanner.

New York Press (Rep.)

The president of the company informed the governor that he was acting entirely within the law, and demanded protection. This Governor Tanner refused, averring that the performance of his duty, in conformity with his oath of office, was opposed to "the well matured sentiment of the people of Illinois." Thus relieved from all legal restraint and restored by the action of the executive to a state of nature, both sides, previously conducting a peaceful struggle, flew to arms. Their forces met, and in the battle that ensued the losses were heavier than those of the regiment which bore the brunt of the much-discussed action of La Quasima. The events which led to this bloody affair lay the guilt for these deaths at the governor's door. If there is no law in the state of Illinois to reach this arch-criminal and wholesale murderer, then God help the state of Illinois!

New York Journal of Commerce

It is the right of every owner of property in Illinois to employ on that property any person he chooses to, and both he and that person are entitled to ample protection by the state or its subordinate political divisions in carrying on any lawful occupation. If any citizen of Illinois refuses employment on terms offered and the employment is accepted by any person not a citizen of the state-a person who went there, as a great part of Governor Tanner's constituents went there, to seek employment-the town, the county, and the state are under obligations to protect the man who offers the employment, the man who accepts the employment, and the property on which the work is done. In denying this, in refusing to restrain Illinois mobs from assaulting men who come from Tennessee or elsewhere to obtain work, Governor Tanner is undertaking to incite a new movement of secession.

Brooklyn Eagle (Ind Dem)

The state of Illinois must hang its head in shame at such an exhibition of demagogism on the part of its chief officer. When Governor Tanner declares that he will not protect the citizens of Illinois in their right to employ the citizens of Georgia he is false to his official oath. When he charges the coal company with bringing a blot upon the name of the state he is guilty of sophistry. If he had done his duty in the first place there would have been no bloodshed. The strikers may have had grievances against their employers, but they had no right to use force to prevent other men from working under conditions which they had found intolerable. It is a fatal error for strikers to conclude that violence can ever be effective in the settlement of disputes. The moment they fire a shot the whole organization of orderly society is arrayed against them. They can not win in any contest with the forces which insist on the peaceful conduct of business.

Philadelphia ress (Rep.)

There may be some sympathy felt for the deluded miners in this situation, but there will be none felt for Governor Tanner. His unwise course has misled the miners, resulted in bloodshed and murder, brought disgrace upon a great state, and injured

the cause of labor irreparably. Instead of upholding law and order he has encouraged riot and crime. Of this charge he will stand accused at the bar of public opinion.

Yellow Fever and Federal Quarantine

Nashville (Tenn.) American

The continuance of yellow fever in the south, the attendant paralysis of business, the state of uncertainty into which it throws the people of the whole southern country, and the uneasiness it causes their friends and relatives throughout the land render it highly imperative that the thought of the best minds in the country should be turned to solving the question, How is the south to meet yellow fever? In order to make conditions better two steps are necessary: First, educate the mass of people to the idea that yellow fever is not the dangerous pest it once was, scientific methods of treating it and preventing its spread having removed many of the horrible features which formerly attended it; and, second, establish a national quarantine. This last is going to be very difficult to do. Various cities of the country, in the first place, fear each other. Some people in New Orleans, for instance, fear New York may get control of the law and operate it in a hostile manner to New Orleans's commerce; Florida and other coast states are not quite sure but that it will seriously interfere with their trade with Cuba, and then, of course, the quarantine officials who have jobs are against national quarantine. There is also the standing objection, encroachment of the federal government upon state's rights. All of these show the difficulty of passing this much needed law. But to offset these the argument that the present archaic system is ineffective is still good. The Caffery bill was an excellent measure and one similar to it should be passed at the coming session of congress.

Savannah (Ga.) News

There is no good reason why the people of Mississippi or Louisiana or any other state should be thrown into a panic and all business stopped whenever a few cases of yellow fever appear in its limits. Two things are necessary to prevent such a condition of affairs. One is a national quarantine systema system that would do away with the shotgun quarantineand the other is the dissemination of correct information about yellow fever and its treatment. Let the people be made to understand that it is much easier to prevent the spread of the disease by means of sanitary measures and regulations than by barriers against the infected localities sustained by shotguns; then panics will cease and communities will not become the objects of charity, because business will be carried on as usual and people will attend to their ordinary occupations as they do when other kinds of infectious diseases gain a foothold among them. It is, of course, going to be a troublesome thing to get a national quarantine law enacted. Some oppose it on one ground and some on another, but it is difficult to see how any citizen of the southern cities most deeply interested in land quarantine can justify himself in opposing national quarantine.

Philadelphia Ledger

The outbreak and spread of yellow fever in a number of communities in Mississippi and Louisiana renews attention to the fact that there is pending in the United States senate a bill, introduced by Mr. Caffery, of Louisiana, to place the quarantine control of the nation under the direction of the federal authorities. The amount of damage inflicted upon the country by the shotgun quarantine can never be accurately stated, but it certainly amounted to many millions, and the possibility of its existence is a stigma upon our institutions and civilization. It is sought to accomplish two objects by adopting the Caffery bill; the first is to protect the health of the general public, and the second is to prevent the lawless and uncalled-for interference with commerce, which so often prevails in times of epidemic. Quarantine in some parts of the south is too stringent, while in others it is too lax. Needless severity obstructs trade, while neglect or concealment facilitates the spread of disease. The Caffery bill is wisely conceived, but before it can pass it may be necessary for the obstructionists in congress to study another lesson of the terrors and losses inflicted upon the south by the ravages of yellow fever in the face of the present headless and jumbled quarantine system.

New Orleans (La.) Times-Democrat

A uniform quarantine, conducted on scientific principles, is what we need. We have secured an improvement by an agrée

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