Marshall County Republican. (Plymouth, Ind.) 1856-1878, 1874-01-08
The Triumph of Independents.

The election of Newton Booth to the
United States Senate by the California
Legislature is the most important vic
tory for independent politics and prin-
ciples that has yet been achieved. 1t is
a victory gained after one of the most
bitter and unrelenting contests between
the people and corrupt money power
that American politics ever exhibited.
Though ON this side of the mountains
people are coming to realizing sense of
the corrupting and overshadowing pow
er of municipalities, the disease they are
here called to combat is health itself by
comparison to the virulent state it has
attained ON the Pacific slope. In Cali
fornia both the old party organizations
and their leading men" have for years
been oaOned, literally and absolutely.
by the Central Pacific Railroad Com
pany and the Bank of California. These
overgrown money powers have system
atically run" the State gov eminent,
whichever "party" might be in the as
cendant, just as they have run the bust
ness behind their own office-counters.
They have composed Legislatures and
made laws, have corrupted Judges, and
bought and sold Offices; have bought
seats for their creatures in the United
States Senate, and have owned the Cali
fornia delegation at Washington. The
State of California, its Government, its
commerce, its mercantile and business
industry, have belonged to these corrupt
money combinations as effectually as if
the railroad and bank men had been
feudal robber-barons of the middle
ages, commanding the country and all
that dwelt therein from some crag-
perched castle on the Rhine. The ere
publican party and the Democratic !"
party have been their obedient instru-
ments and the convenient cloaks to their
self-aggrandizing purposes. Whoever
has refused to be their henchman has
been marked for destruction.
Newton Booth, man who seems to
have been peculiarly fitted by nature
and culture for so hazardous an under
taking, dared to raise the banner of in
dependence and march at the head of a
popular rebellion. The desperate and
fierce character of the contest waged at
TIE last State election is imperfectly I'M
derstood by people in this valley. How
the Republican leaders and the
Democratic" leaders played into each
others hands; how the railroad and
bank rings stood with their money-bags
behind both, directing the campaign
and supplying the ''sineys of war )"
and how, finally, at the polls, the INDIE
pendents triumphed over the allied
hosts of corruption; these are facts of
history. From the moment of the VIC
tory won by the Independents at the
polls, the watchword of both the old
political putridities became, Anything
to beat Booth I" Newton Booth, the
political rebel, the leader of the INDIE
pendent movement, the rising Hampden
of the Pacific slope, had developed
force and character as popular leader
that rendered him dangerous to the old
corruptionists. He must be crushed at
all hazards. And the Democratic I"
fuglemen and Republican fuglemen
every vile creature of the money
rings-went to work with a will to
crush him. A contest more desperate,
or on the part of the allied corruption
lists, more thoroughly INSCRIPTIONS and
devilish, than the Senatorial contest
against Booth in the California Legisla-
ture, the history of American politics
does not record.
The corruptionists are again beaten.
The Independents are again victorious,
and the last is their grandest victory.
Newton Booth, the ablest and most con-
spicuous leader of the Independent po-
itical movement in the United States, is
chosen to the United States Senate for
six years from the 4th of March, 1875.
The political Siamese twins of corrup-
ton in California are overthrown.
Democratic putridity and "Repub-
ican putridity are buried in the same
foul grave.-Chicago Times.