An Able And Upright Judge

We have realized, from the beginning of the canvass for the nomina - tion of candidates for the office of Justice of the Supreme Court, that Judge Champlin, in the governing ideas of his career and in his action on the bench, is more nearly in accord with the interests of the common people, the workingmen, whose, cause the industrial party upholds, than any other nominee or proposed nominee for the position. Sti II, for some reason, or without reason, there was prejudice against him on the part of those whose interests he has always sustained. It ought not to be an objection to him that he is a genuine democrat - for that identifies him with the cause of the common people; or that he is a good citizen and a good lawyer. As a man and a judge his record is all right. It is without a flaw. To his credit we can say that he has always been a friend of labor. As far back as 1867, when there was no labor movement and to say aught in favor pf workingmen was uncommon, Mr. Champlin, then mayor of Grand Rapids, in a message to the common council of that city, recommended the adoption of the eight hour law. This was twentyfour years ago. Only two years before, in 1865, congress liad passed a law for the importation of cheap labor from Europe, established a bureau of immigration, and had enacted that in case any individual or Corporation should advance the cost of transporting laborers to this country the same should be a lien on their wages until paid. At that time the advocacy of an eight-hour law was received with reproach from the governing class in this country. Judge Champlin ought to receive the vote of every workingman in the state. The struggle for the eighthour law is now in progress; but, long before there was such an element in this country as organized labor, and when the eight-hour idea was decidedly unpopular, he had the courage to'openly recommend it. While on the bench he has shown his opposition to trusts. He wrote the decisión of our Supreme Court in the Alger Diamond Match Case, which declared the illegality of that trust, and proclaimed the general principies of law and public policy which are inimical to these plundering aggregations of capital, and leave them no better ground than piracy to stand upon. So clearly does Judge Champlin's decisión set forth the Ilegal character of these combinations that Senator John Sherman took it for his text, quoting nearly the whole of it in his speech against trusts, delivered during the first session of the last congress. It was during the debate on the anti-trust bill that Mr. Sherman said, in effect, that in all cases where a trust is formed the tariff should be abolished on all articles, covered by the trust, that are protected by the tariff. Again, in the homestead fight in our upper península, he took the side, in a decisión by the court, of the settlers on public lands and against the claims of corporations to them, whether they were railroad or lumber companies, and it was on this decisión that the act of congress of 1889, forfeiting unearned railroad lands and opening them to settlement, at the same time saving the rights of homesteaders, was based. No judge of our Supreme Court, going back to 1857, whën it was established in its present form, can show a worthier record. Throughout his career Judge Champlin has been an upright, honest, able, and fearless champion of the cause of the people. Leaving him off the bench would be their loss. In the true sense of the term, he has always been a consistent democrat, and has proven himself to be a sound lawyer and an impartial judge. The court does not enact law, but it can make law serve the ends of justice. Because this is Judge Champlin's manifest object he should be elected. - March 18, 1801.