Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1873-08-16
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY RETIREs.

Illinois, on the first Monday of June,
elected % Judges to her Circuit Court,
besides two Supreme Court Judges and
and several Court Judges to fill vacan-
cies. These judicial Offices are now
filled with judges elected by nominat-
ing conventions, and elected because of
their politics; and a partisan Legisla-
ture labored for months to arrange the
circuits so as to secure the largest pos
sible number of Republican judges.
Nevertheless, in all Illinois but four
Republican Conventions have been held
to nominate candidates for Circuit
Judge, and of these one adjourned,
failing to agree, without making NOM
ination.
In other words, the Republican party
of Illinois, which cast So 900 majority
for Grant, has laid down it's organiza-
ton, and surrendered the Bench of the
State to any nominations rather than
have a contest with the Farmers
Oranges.
Says the Chicago T'ibunc:
The farmers movement has para
lyzed the Republican party in Illinois,
and the paralyris promises to endure
for some time The movement is only
in its infancy. It's interference in the
election OF judges is not by any means
thorough. In many counties the organ
ization is incomplete, and it was no part
of the programme in the first instance
to interfere with the Courts. Farmers
nominations of candidates for judges
are but an incident; the organization
has further and more distinctive work
before it. In November next there is
to be elected in every county in this
State a corps of county officers, includ-
ing treasurers, county clerks, surveyors,
etc., which have heretofore been re-
garded as the exclusive spoils of party
managers. The farmers organizations
will probably nominate their own men,
and elect them to all these places, ox-
cept in the larger cities. A year later,
in 1874, they will have their organiza-
ton so complete in every township that
they will take the election of the
twenty-six State Senators and the 153
Representatives in the Legislature into
their own hands. We do not say that it
is altogether desirable, but we look
upon it as highly probable. They will
also take into their own hands the
election of Members of Congress, and
will select men not because of their
advocacy of the fifteenth amendment
nor of their loyalty during the war, but
because of their supposed fidelity to
farmers interests"
IT. has benn ono of tho ctop,1;po NOV
vels of our politics that party whose
policy was SO peculiarly hurtful to the
interests of farmers as a class-and that
class the largest among all our indus
tries could nevertheless, retain it's pow
er and maintain its policy. But the
end is drawing near. The farmers
have merely begun to combine, they
scarcely know for what, though we'll
enough do they know against what,
and the Republican party of Illinois
retires from the field of battle where
for years it has encamped victorious.
The statesmen who show to the farm
ers of the West and the planters of the
South just what it is-to-wit, our pro-
tective legislation and our fluctuating
currency cheats their labor of it's
due rewards and plumbers them alike
of the bounty of Providence and the
fruit of their own toll, will confer upon
them the first political blessings. The
party that inscribes Free Trade and
Farmers Rights upon its banners can
possess the future and make it memor-
able for sci vices done to mankind.