River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1886-10-07
MADISON LETTER.
Madison, Oct. 2, 1886.

| MADISON LIE TEX.
Madison. Oct. 2. 1886.
Naturally the topic of paramount inter
est at the political centre of the state, is
politics; and if this letter should partake
largely of political topics it will be because
there is little else thought of or talked of
at this time.
The conjectures and predictions as to
the result of the present canvass for state
| officers are so varied and differ 50 essen.
tally from each other, that it would be
improbable TO attempt to forecast the
probable result from an examination of
the data upon which different persons
base their predictions The campaign is
yet too young to afford any grounds for
conclusion, and a more profitable exercise
will be the discussion of the issues which
are presented for the consideration of the
voters of the state.
The chairman of the State Central
Committee, in his address to the voters
Of Wisconsin, has concisely stated the
principal issues involved; and careful
perusal of that paper is recommended to
every reader of the JOURNAL. IN this
address will be found no claims for the
Republican party which cannot be sub
stantiated by its history; and that which
a man or party has done, is always ac-
copied as a better guarantee of his or its
honesty and ability than any mere plat
form profession of what he or it will do
In this respect the party does not fear to
present its record as the champion of free
labor, North and South, from the day of
its birth to the present day. Education,
which means elevation, freedom, which
means independence of action, free SOIL
which means opportunity to become pro
prietors, and in a sense, capitalists, and
protection to home industries, which
means protection to the operative as well
as TO the manufacturer, are all out
growths of Republican thought, coupled
with Republican legislation. The aboli-
ton of slavery, while it may be consid-
cred as an eXigency of war, would not
have been accomplished but for the firm
ness of the men who were leaders in the
Republican party, and who were backed
by a public sentiment which enabled
them to carry out the terms of the paper
proclamation which transformed four
million slaves into four million treemen.
AS L have endeayored heretofore to show
the principal issue of this campaign is,
whether the people of the state feel their
obligation to support Gov. Rusk in the
stand which he took in the May riots, or
whether they feel that they can afford to
encourage foreign agitators of the Croft
kan-Schilling stripe in their anarchistic
theories and acts. 1t must, Of necessity,
be one thing or the other. The election
of Gov. Rusk will be an emphatic endorse
ment of his action in the May riots. His
defeat would be accepted by the lawless
element in this and other states, whether
so intended or not, as a notice that the
state has no power to suppress lawless-
ness and instruction. Such decision
would break down the only barrier inter-
posed between property and lawless
might, and unsettle the very foundations
of society.
The affirmation at the polls that the
Governor was right in opposing armed
force to armed force cannot be tortured,
| by any demagoguery, however specious,
into an attack upon workingmen. The
workingmen of Pierce county, for in
stance, are not comprised in the small
class who perform the unskilled labor of
the country. Every farmer every me-
chanic, every engineer, fireman, miller,
| cooper, blacksmith or other artisan, is
workingman. In all these branches,
majority are Capitalists" They own
their homes, which shelter their wives
and children, and the same sentiment
which protects the great manufactures
at Bay View protects the homes and the
savings of the smaller Capitalists" who
comprise the great majority of our citi-
zens. The Red Flag agitators make no
distinction in classes. Any man who by
economy saves a hundred dollars, places
himself without the pale of the privileged
class which they denominate Working
men" for whom is claimed the God-given
right to live, and that by division Of
property which some other person has
earned by hands or brain, and saved by
self-denial and economy.
1t is not alone upon the law-and-order
issue, however, that the Republican
party goes before the people of Wisconsin.
| Questions of National import ere involved
in every election, whether State or Ma
tional. The people of the Northern States
are confronted, only twenty years after
the close of a bloody war for National
preservation, by the startling spectacle of
the government for which they fought,
controlled by, and administered in the
interests Of the men who sought to destroy
it. The assertion of this fact is no refiec-
ton upon those voters whose affiliations
are with the Democratic party Of the
North. Personally they are good citizens,
lliberty-loying and patriotic. But this
does not at all lessen the danger incurred
in voting to turn the State and National
Governments over to the party which is
dominated by Southern ideas. But one
branch of the National Congress yet in
tervenes between the people and COM
plete surrender Of the government into
the hands of the men who fought to dis
member it. The Democratic party,
whatever its protestatlons in Wisconsin
or any other Northern State, is subject to
the will of the South, whose behests are
law To the President and lower house of
Congress, and which is represented in
in nine-tenths Of the foreign courts and
consulatss. 1t is that influence which
keeps Dakota waiting at the door of the
Union, although she has double the popu-
Iation necessary to entitle her to admis-
sion. 1t was that influence which clam
. ored for war with sister republic, with