Consolidation
In the meantime it will be well to keep an eye on Henry Smith add his old friend from Kentucky.
Direct legislation will put tbe people in a position to laugh at franchise grabbers and professional boodlers.
The Spanish army contractors who furnished tbe Spanish with Mauser cartridges filled with hair and wooden bullers mast have been learning some Yankee tricks.
There is no loss without some gain. Without McKinley's bargain counter appointees the services of the military whitewashing board would have been lost to the country.
The administration will endeavor to have the strength of the standing army raised to 100,000 men at the next session of congress. This means a continuation of the war taxes.
The Main st. pavement is an object lesson which is already convincing the property owners of unpaved business streets that they are some distance behind the procession.
It may not be one of place to remark that the fellows who sold and the fellows who purchased the supplies for the commissary department did not go to war in search of health. They had plenty of that before they went south.
Those Pingree patriots who expect anything more substantial than artistic turndowns from Burrows legislators will have some corrections to make in their calculations. The two brands of statesmanship mix like air and gasoline, but keep your matches in your pocket.
Those individuals who confine their literary pursuits entirely to the perusal of Detroit Journal editorials are to be excused if they labor under the delusion that harmony between the state and federal wings of the republican party exists elsewhere than in the fertile imaginations of republican editors.
It was very nice in hizzexcellecy to invite Gen. Alger in out of the rain. But the governor should remember that this new acquisition to his galaxy of bright, particular stars knows more abont macbine politics than he does about war and will probably expect large dividends upon his uew investment.
Orrin R. Pierce is a representative of the plain, common people. He has not learned the ways of the lawyer nor the arts of the public speaker but he is possessed of a fund of good business sense and a pleasing personality which will place him in a position to render valuable assistance to the people of this congressional district.
The efforts of the distinguished, but self-appointed, peace commission which is exploring inter-stellar space for a peace basis broad enough to afford standing room for Pingree and Burows at one and the same time are not crowned with that measure of success calculated to banish bad dreams from the slumbers of the Kalamazoo statesman.
The next issue of the Michigan Manual would satisfy a long felt want if, long with the other useful information which that volume usually contains, it would apprise the people just how much of the time of the army of tax-eating clerks who swarm the state capitol is devoted to the business of the state and how much is devoted to plugging for republican candidates.
One would hardly think that the business of the state of Michigan has doubled in six years yet this must be the case. From 1890 to 1892 Gen. Stone did the business of the auditor general's office with 52 clerks. At the present time Auditor General Dix bas 104 men on his pay roll. It may be that the average efficiency of the republican clerk is only one-half that of a democratic appointee, but a more reasonable conjecture is that these extra appointments were made for political purposes and that the salaries that the appointees have drawn from the state treasury has not lessened the republican campaign fund.
The present condition of the city treasury should teach the city council a salutary lesson. The charter wisely restricts the sum which can be raised by general taxation in any one year to one-half of one per cent. The council has already spent this sum and has contracted debts which it bas not the cash at band to settle. Another provision in the charter prevents the council from issuing warrants in excess of the sum which will be in the treasury on the first day of February next. In other words the council cannot issue orders on next year's taxes. If this unpleasant predicament shall have the effect of checking the somewhat reckless manner in which the city funds have been voted away, it will be well worth the vexation which it has caused.
There is a vague suspicion that Paris Banfield's friendship for candidate Kingsley has a string attached to it.
And the Hon. James O'Donnell, of Jackson, and console himself with the reflection that those who don't dance are under no obligations to pay the fiddler.
Until Paris Banfield gets D. W. Springer's "O. K. " on his boom for under sheriff we shall persist in regarding it as one of Ham Kingsley 's "strategic" moves.
The able prevaricator who presides over the political columns of the Detroit Journal will find an ample scope for his talents in reconciling Burrows' $2.00 lumber tariff with Ping's free leather.
And on this glorious October morning it might be well to note the fact that one honest John Gillen, of Saline, will be Washtenaw's next sheriff and a good one too.
In footing up his thanksgiving Iedger Hazen will make due note of the fact that Bill Thompson, Andrew Campbell, Andrew Jaokson Sawyer and others will be otherwise engaged next time.
It may have been observed that there was a deep, but not at all painful, silence in the vicinity of that hall in which Senator Burrows was to have talked to the Students' Republican Club.
The condition of mutual confidence and helpfulness which prevails between Gov. Pingree and the federal wing of the republican party should be a lesson to dove-like manipulators of political wires.
With a smile that is child-like and bland the opulent editor of the Times observes the auspicious opening of the theater season and the upward tendency of telephone stock, while Oramer does the rest.
For crude and unsophisticated lying Commend as to the republican editor whose business it is to make the practical results of the Dingley bill coincide with the promises so freely made for that measure.
General Porposes seems to occupy quite as prominent a place in the distribution of Michigan state funds as General Debility did in the distributions of commissary supplies to the volunteer soldiers.
In "raising the wind" for this fall's campaign Mark Hanna has at his disposal a new and original source of revenue in the military supply contractors who played horse with McKinley's commissary department.
Senator Burrows evidently proceeds upon the assumption that it is of importance in politics, as elsewhere, to claim every thing and concede nothing. Once in a while the senator will rise to the dignity of statesmanship inspite of himself.
Ypsilantian: The democrats of Washtenaw county made a good selection at their convention in nominating O. R. Haston for register of deeds. He is a man that is well qualified for the plaoe. Give him your support on election day.
The State Republican says State Treasurer Geo. A. Steel has been a father to the state treasury. Without questioning the veracity of the Republican we may say that he has been keeping most profligate company for an exemplary parent.
Those who ought to know say that Mr. Hanna, the hero of the "business campaign" of 1896, is about to put some of the "quickening spirit" into the congressional canvass now on. This will be welcome news for Henry Smith and his old friend from Kentucky.
When they have an obdurate and vicious horse to tame on the western ranches, as a last resort an expert rider mounts and forces the beast at full speed over the prairie until it succumbs from sheer exbaustion. This would seem to be the method the republican leaders have adopted for getting rid of Pingree.
The democratic party is opposed to election reforms whose only purpose is to make it more difficult for the voter to exercise his franchise. The Australian ballot law is all right.but it is already hedged about with too many nonsensical regulations. What we need is a careful pruning of our election laws rather than the passage of new ones.
Willard Stearns, the redoubtable editor of the Adrian Press, is running for circuit judge in the Lenawee-Hillsdale district. He has a hard district to run in but as he is a great believer in equal and exact justice to everyone and is no respecter of persons, a man being a man to him in whatever clothes be may be dressed, he should give a good account of himself on election day.
Equal taxation is notion issue in the political campaign which is now upon us. Both of the great political parties have declarad in state convention for it. All of the democratic legislative nominees are heartily in favor of taxing all kinds of property, corporate as well as private, in the same proportion and in the same manner. Some of the republican candidates are, and more of them are not. But whatever the present attitude of the republican party and its candidates toward a question which touches the pocket of every taxpayer it will not be forgotten that, while that party has had an almost uninterrupted lease of power in this state for 40 years, it has persistently failed - failed even under extraordinary pressure - to grant relief to the people. If we are to judge the future by the past we have little to expect from a republican legislature in the way of a re-adjustment of the burdens of taxation. Neither will it be forgotten that the laws now upon the statute books of Michigan looking to the regulation and control of railroad corporations and imposing a higher tax upon that class of property, which have stood the test of the courts, were passed by a democratic legislature and signed by a democratic governor.